WIFE AND MOTHER OF SOVIET MIG PILOT APPEAL FOR HIS RETURN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00498R000100020125-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 5, 2007
• Sequence Number: 125
• Publication Date: September 29, 1976
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/07/05: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100020125-4
.AKTF I.E
By CIfRASTOPHER S. IV.t N
5.rtil to Thn New York T:: ,,
i_ OSCO':r, Sept.23-The wife and the.
:mother of a Soviet pilot who flew his.
.
12et fighter to Japan were brought forward.
;today by the Soviet authorities to plead
;for him to come home without fear of
punishment.
At- a news conference for Soviet and
foreign reoorters, Lyudmila Petrovna
3eienko said she had., been assured."at
s sufficiently high level" that her hus-
iband, First Lieut. Viktor I. Belenko, would
ice forgiven, "even if he had made a m.is
Make.'." A . Foreign. Ministry, spokesman.
present, Lev V. hrylov, added that."offi
;::al guarantees have been given by com-
etent Soviet bodies."
irs. -eienkoa nd her mother-ir_-law,
`Lyudmiia Ste, anovna Belenko, said t ey
sent a cablegram to-President Ford 10
c.:;s ago asking him to return the pilot
his
his fa~ ily.
Comments Are Widely Publicized
Lieutenant relerko fancied his MIG-25
(fighter on the Japanese island of Hokkai-
do three weeks ago. and, according to
Japanese authori ties, requested asylum in
the Unit--
I States. It was promptly grant-
.
.
by-President Ford The plane, believed Ludmilla
by some to be the most advanced of its
ind, is being dismantled by Japanese ex- detector,
m
oerts 11:n A
eric assit
-ansance.
The women's comments.. figured promi-
nentiy in. - Soviet .-radio. and television
Irewscast3, injecting an emotional ele-
tn',ent.into Moscow's campaign to get the
I plane and pilot back and presenting the
Ivnited States with an implicit challenge
to present Lieutenant .Belenko publicly..
has not been heard from since he -
arrived in the United' States on Sept. 9..'
George Bush, the Director of Central
intelligence, sad in a television program
in the United States', on Sept. 19 that
e defection was. a "major inte!ligenceK TI.:-i5S
29 September 1976
J. :L ,_~v, AYa F, area Y, va .a+aYUa.? ~i t+..? , ....v v.+r...-
appears with the pilot's mother at press conference in Piloscow.
Wife Says Marriaget Was Happy
His wife, who is 25 years old, said they
were married five years and' had, been
living happily in' the Soviet Fa; East --A
dispatch from Tokyo, published-Sept.'-2Z
in The New York Times, quoted intelli-
Bence sources as. having said, that Lieu
tenant Belenko had an unhappy marriage.
In the nevvs conference, his wife frequ-
ently referred to their 3? year-old son,
nicknamed Dima, for.Dmitri. The day be?
fore the flight to Japan, she said, the
pilot played with his son and read hina
fairy tales. ,
In their cablegram, sent from the Far
Eastern . city of Khabarovsk, the two
women said - they had asked President
Ford as "father- of. a family" to "under= .
stand our 'great sorrow and help' as far
? as possible." Copies of a cablegram and
of an intimate letter to Lieutenant Belen-
ko from his wife were distributed-today.
i~Ir.. Krylov, who presided at the news
conference, called the affair "tantamount!
to splitting a family by force" -and said
it contradicted the Helsinki accord signed
l
by President Ford last year,
STAT
Approved For Release 2007/07/05: CIA-RDP99-00498R000100020125-4