Mathias Rust

A daring act of defiance during the Cold War era or a slight accidental stunt was the fact that brought the name of Mathias Rust into the spotlight around the world. An inexperienced pilot, the 18 year-old German Rust landed a small airplane inside the Red Square on Moscow on 28 May, 1987, showing to the world that the powerful URSS actually had some flaws of their own, specially concerning their air control which allowed Rust easy entry inside the capital of Soviet Union. To Rust, the idea was to show that despite the differences between the capitalist and communism nations were just a matter of barriers, a sort of peaceful act during a time when those different ideologies were always at the brink of a nuclear war with Gorbachev and Reagan policies. As result, many senior officers of the Russian defense system were dismissed while Rust was arrested, originally sentenced to serve four years in prison for breach of security and disregard of aviation laws - Gorbachev then reduced his sentence to 14 months. On 1988, back in his homeland Germany, Mathias Rust was a minor celebrity for a time, gave some interviews about his stunt but also faced another prison time after stabbing and wounding a female colleague who rejected his advances when they were working on a hospital facility where they were on a community service. The sentence of 2 years ended after 15 months. Of his current activities, it includes some peace activism, works as a professional poker player or in an investment bank as an analyst.