Mom is an Ovechkin family. How a large family of musicians from Irkutsk hijacked a passenger plane to escape from the USSR. Behind the iron curtain
In addition, the Ovechkins bought new clothes, which they changed into in order to look more impressive abroad. Dmitry Ovechkin made sawn-off shotguns from guns, and also assembled three pipe bombs, one of which was detonated in order to evaluate the effect of the explosion. He also made a double bottom in the double bass and secured weapons, bombs and a hundred rounds of ammunition there.
Aircraft hijacking
| Aeroflot Flight 3739 | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| the date | March 8, 1988 |
| Place | |
| dead | 9 |
| Wounded | 19 |
| Aircraft | |
| Model | Tu-154B-2 |
| Airline | |
| Departure point | |
| Stopovers | |
| Destination | |
| Flight | 3739 |
| Side number | CCCP-85413 |
| Release date | 1980 |
| Passengers | 76 (including 11 hijackers) |
| Crew | 8 |
| dead | 9 (including 5 hijackers) |
| Wounded | 17 (including 2 hijackers) |
| Survivors | 75 |
Since there were a lot of empty seats on the plane, the Ovechkins moved to the tail section of the cabin. The older brothers showed the flight attendants a photograph of the Seven Simeons ensemble to convince them that they were artists. At 14:53, when the plane was flying in the Vologda region, two older Ovechkin brothers got up and forbade the rest of the passengers to leave their seats, threatening with sawn-off shotguns. At 15:01, Vasily Ovechkin handed over a note to flight attendant Irina Vasilyeva demanding to change course and land in London or another city in the UK under the threat of an aircraft explosion. At 15:15, the board reported that there was fuel left for 1 hour and 35 minutes of flight.
In accordance with the Air Code of the USSR, under the circumstances, the aircraft crew had the right to make their own decisions. In order not to put passengers at risk, the crew initially decided to fly abroad. However, there were not enough fuel supplies on the liner to the nearest Finnish or Swedish airfield. In Kurgan, the plane was refueled, but just enough to fly to Leningrad, in extreme cases - to an alternate airfield in Tallinn. If you follow to Finland, then at an unknown airfield you would have to maneuver, study approaches. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Tu-154 crew had no experience and was not prepared for international flights: they did not know the location of the air corridors and the foreign flight separation system; domestic aircraft did not have the necessary handbooks on radio communications, landing approaches, etc. catastrophic consequences. Another problem was the language barrier - only the navigator knew English on the Tu-154 domestic flight.
At 15:30, flight engineer Innokenty Stupakov went into the cabin and, as a result of negotiations, managed to explain that there was not enough fuel for the flight to the UK, after which he managed to convince the terrorists to allow landing to refuel the aircraft in Finland. At 16:05, the aircraft landed at the Veshchevo military airfield near the Finnish border. It was announced over the loudspeaker in the cabin that the airliner was landing for refueling at the airport in the Finnish city of Kotka.
Seeing Soviet soldiers through the windows, the Ovechkins realized that they had been deceived. The Ovechkin brothers demanded to take off immediately, tried to break down the cockpit door, threatened to start killing passengers. Dmitry Ovechkin shot and killed flight attendant Tamara Hot. According to the memoirs of a participant in the events, police major I. Vlasov, the Ovechkins did not go to negotiations in principle, a categorical refusal followed the proposal to release at least women and children: “no conditions!” . At the request of the terrorists, the plane was refueled.
At 19:10, the assault on the aircraft began. The assault was carried out by employees of a special unit of the police patrol service of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate Lenoblyspolkom, commanded by police lieutenant colonel S. S. Khodakov. The assault on the aircraft was carried out by a group under the command of Art. militia lieutenant A. I. Lagodich from 10 people, police officers from the Vyborg GOVD were in the cordon. Both units were completely unintended for anti-terrorist operations, and, as it turned out later, this attack was the first case for their members. The capture group entered the plane through the cockpit.
The terrorists put up armed resistance, opening fire on the employees of the capture group and hitting some of them, while the capture group itself, starting to shoot from the cab, managed to hit four passengers. After the Ovechkins discovered they were running out of ammo, they made the decision to detonate the improvised explosive device they had and commit suicide. The whole family gathered together, but Igor changed his mind at the last moment and hid. The explosion, however, only punched a hole in the fuselage and a fire started on board the aircraft, but the fragments went up and to the sides, which is why the Ovechkins survived. Panic arose in the cabin, someone managed to open the emergency hatch, and the passengers began to jump onto the concrete of the runway, being, according to their testimony, beaten by police officers, who later justified their actions by the fact that, in their opinion, the terrorists could be hiding among the passengers . Then Vasily ordered Olga to take Tatyana, Mikhail, Ulyana and Sergey out of the plane, saying that nothing would happen to them, since they were not the perpetrators of the terrorist act. After that, Ninel ordered Vasily to shoot her, herself and the older children. Dmitry was killed first, then Alexander, and then Oleg, after which Vasily shot his mother and himself. Igor saw all this and, fearing that Vasily would kill him too, hid in the restroom in front of the plane
March 8, 1988 with many children Ovechkin family committed an armed seizure of the Tu-154 aircraft.
In the 1980s, visitors to Soviet cinemas before films did not watch advertisements or trailers for future films, but newsreels - "Wick", "Yeralash", "I Want to Know Everything", "Chronicle of Our Days" and others.
"What good fellows"
In one of these newsreels there was a memorable story about an amazing musical ensemble in which seven brothers from a large family played at once. The ensemble had a memorable name - "Seven Simeons".
Sometimes, leaving the cinema, the audience remembered not only the film, but also the brothers-musicians: “Look, what good fellows! And they help mom around the house, and study at school, and also study music!
In March 1988, the news reports deafened - an attempt was made to hijack a passenger plane abroad. At that time, such things in the Soviet Union were considered out of the ordinary. But even more shocking was the fact that those same wonderful “Seven Simeons”, led by their mother, turned out to be bloodthirsty terrorists.
Mother
Ninel Sergeevna Ovechkina lost her father in the war. Immediately after the war, the mother also died, after which the girl ended up in an orphanage. When Ninel was 15, her cousin took her in. She dreamed of her own house and a large family, and at the age of 20 she married driver Dmitry Ovechkin.
The husband was not a prince on a white horse, he liked to drink, but Ninel gave birth to 12 children from him. The difficult beginning of life forged in her an iron character, thanks to which she stubbornly went towards the goals that she set for herself.
Frame youtube.comThe head of the family was not her husband, but she, Ninel. She built a strict discipline, taught the children to work and managed them, never raising her hand to them and never raising her voice.
Over time, the father's drinking habit turned into chronic alcoholism, and dad made it a rule to frighten his wife and children with a hunting rifle. As a result, in May 1984, Dmitry Ovechkin died from beatings inflicted on him by his eldest sons. During the inspection, the police came to the conclusion that the guys were defending themselves from the unbridled parent and did not exceed the limits of permissible self-defense. The case was closed.
family ensemble
This happened almost immediately after the debut performance of the Seven Simeons ensemble in Moscow. It was created at the Irkutsk Regional Musical College, where Ninel first enrolled her older and then her younger sons in turn.
The teachers of the school seemed interested in the idea of a family ensemble, and after several months of training and rehearsals, Seven Simeons were ready to perform in public. Basil played drums, Dmitry- on the pipe Oleg- on saxophone Alexander- on contrabass Igor- on the piano, Michael- on trombone Sergey- banjo.
The audience accepted Simeonov with a bang, the ensemble won several competitions and became a kind of hallmark of the city for the authorities of Irkutsk. Ovechkin was given two three-room apartments in a new building.
The press, of course, did not write about the fact that the mother of talented artists has been working as a saleswoman in a wine and vodka store for many years. And Ninel Sergeevna used her status as a mother-heroine in a peculiar way - at the height of the anti-alcohol campaign, she illegally sold vodka. The police knew about it very well, but they did not dare to touch the mother of "Seven Simeons".
A photo: Frame youtube.com
They wanted more
Fame did not make them millionaires, but the Ovechkins' standard of living has risen markedly. Ninel, however, wanted more. Somehow she expressed dissatisfaction with journalists who were filming another story about musician brothers - why, they say, they show them “some kind of peasants” and not “artists”? The "Simeons" themselves were also overtaken by "star disease" - they refused to enter Gnesinka without exams, deciding that everyone could do it anyway.
In the fall of 1987, Seven Simeons went on tour to Japan. The realities of the capitalist world, as they say, "ripped off the roof." Moreover, the Japanese announced their readiness to sign a performance contract with the brothers.
In 1987, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to obtain permission to perform for long periods in Japan. The Ovechkin brothers even wanted to stay in the country, asking for asylum, but then they decided that the whole family should flee to the West.
Well, what would happen if the Ovechkins stayed in Japan? A loud scandal would be enough for a couple of years of interest in them. But then it would have been tough - the guys played well for amateur performances, but they were not professionals. The teachers noted that only Igor and Mikhail had undoubted talent, and they would still need to be taught almost everything. So what awaited Simeonov abroad was not world fame, but at best the role of a restaurant team. Because, as the old joke goes, there is a big difference between tourism and emigration.
Armed Escape Fortunately
But the Ovechkins did not look that far. Ninel, after listening to her sons, decided that we would fight our way to a “happy life in the West” through hijacking an aircraft.
The authority of the mother was indisputable, and preparations began. They decided to hide the weapons and ammunition in the case of the double bass, which hardly passed through the metal detectors. And in general, the calculation was based on the fact that the well-known musical family will not be checked very carefully before boarding.
The Ovechkins' idea was simple - to seize a domestic flight and, under the threat of the use of weapons, force the pilots to fly the liner outside the USSR.
The older brothers bought two hunting rifles and cartridges for them. Two sawn-off shotguns were made from guns. They also made three homemade bombs, one of which was blown up, testing the effect, and the other two were taken with them.
On March 8, 1988, at the airport of Irkutsk, 51-year-old Ninel Ovechkina and her children boarded a Tu-154 aircraft on the Irkutsk-Kurgan-Leningrad flight: 28-year-old Olga, 26-year-old Vasily, 24-year-old Dmitry, 21-year-old Oleg, 19-year-old Alexander, 17-year-old Igor, 14-year-old Tatyana, 13-year-old Mikhail, 10-year-old Ulyana and 9-year-old Sergey.
Younger children were not initiated into the course of the matter. The eldest daughter, 32-year-old Lyudmila, who had lived separately for a long time and had her own family, did not know anything either.
"You are under our control"
The calculation of the Simeons was justified - they did not find a double bottom in the case of the double bass, and the weapon was carried into the plane. There were many empty seats in the cabin, and the hijackers were located in the tail of the Tu-154, from where it was more convenient to observe and operate.
Many passengers looked at famous fellow travelers with interest, especially since the Simeons themselves told the flight attendants that they were all-Union celebrities.
In the sky over Vologda, 24-year-old Dmitry handed a note to the flight attendant: “Go to England (London). Don't go down or we'll blow up the plane. You are under our control."
At first, the stewardess did not believe, considering this not the most successful joke. But then the two Ovechkin brothers got up from their seats and pointed the sawn-off shotguns at the passengers.
It became clear - no jokes, theft is real. A flight engineer came out to negotiate with the Ovechkins, who explained that there could be no talk of any flight to London - there simply wasn’t enough fuel. After some hesitation, the hijackers agreed to land in Finland to refuel. At this time, the commander communicated with ground services and received an order from them - to land the Tu-154 at the Veshchevo military airfield near Vyborg.
The pilots were promised that by the time they landed, everything would be ready, and the Ovechkins would not be able to understand in which country they landed.
But the first thing the Ovechkins saw in Finland was a soldier in Soviet uniform. The brothers realized that they had been deceived and were furious.
Shootout on the plane
In the USSR, by that time, the anti-terrorist special unit of the KGB "Alpha" had been successfully operating for several years. Its fighters were trained to carry out assaults on hijacked airliners. But "Alpha" no one began to wait.
The hijackers demanded that the plane be refueled immediately so that it could fly further. Pretending that the demand was being met, the authorities tried to convince the Ovechkins to release at least the women and children. But they did not make any compromises.
Dmitry Ovechkin, who took over the role of the main performer, shot flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya. So he "avenged" for the deception with landing in "Finland", and at the same time tried to scare the authorities.
The hijackers tried to break into the cockpit, but return shots were fired from there. At that moment, there were already members of the special unit of the patrol police service of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Leningrad Executive Committee, who were entrusted with the assault.
It was assumed that the policemen who entered the cabin would break into the cabin. However, the Ovechkins blocked their path with sawn-off shots. A firefight broke out, passengers were hit by bullets, four of whom were injured.
collective suicide
Soon, the Ovechkins began to run out of ammo. Ninel realized that they would not be released from the Union under any circumstances. Then she ordered her sons to detonate the bomb. The Ovechkins gathered around the explosive device. 17-year-old Igor lost his nerve, and he hid in the toilet to save his life.
The explosion, however, did not kill the Simeons, punching a hole in the fuselage and provoking a fire. Passengers in a panic began to jump out onto the concrete of the runway, where they were grabbed by policemen and beaten, not understanding who was in front of them - a terrorist or a hostage.
On board the Tu-154 at that moment, the older Ovechkins took their own lives. Olga was ordered to bring out the four younger ones, as "they won't get anything."
After that, Vasily Ovechkin shot Dmitry, Alexander, Oleg and his mother - with their full consent. This family suicide ended with the fact that Vasily committed suicide.
Olga Ovechkina in court. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
Court and sentence
Tu-154 burned to the ground. In addition to Ninel Ovechkina and her four sons, flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya and three passengers were killed. 19 people were injured.
The trial of the aircraft hijacking began in Irkutsk on September 6, 1988. Olga and Igor Ovechkin were in the dock. Their role in this case was auxiliary, and therefore the sentence was relatively mild - Igor was sentenced to 8 years, which was the minimum punishment provided for this crime, and Olga - to 6 years, taking into account her pregnancy.
Soon, events in the country forced us to forget about the Ovechkins. After serving four and a half years, they were released not in the USSR, but in the Russian Federation.
Life after...
Igor Ovechkin tried to become a professional musician, but never rose above the level of a restaurant orchestra. In 1999, he was arrested for drug dealing and died in custody. According to reports, Ovechkin was killed by a cellmate during an argument.
Olga, after leaving prison, lived in Irkutsk, selling fish in the market. She failed to establish a normal life, she began to abuse alcohol, and in 2004 she was killed by a roommate in a drunken quarrel.
Of all the Ovechkins, only Mikhail managed to become a real musician. He moved to St. Petersburg, played in jazz bands, and in the early 2000s moved to Spain. In Barcelona, he was part of a street jazz band until he suffered a stroke and became disabled.
The surviving Ovechkins, for obvious reasons, do not like to remember the history of 30 years ago. The pursuit of happiness at any cost ended in great tragedy. The iron character and the will of the domineering mother ruined Ninel Ovechkina herself, and her sons, and innocent people.
Has the fate of the Ovechkin family become a lesson and a warning for someone? I would like to believe in it.
The first message about that terrible tragedy that occurred on March 8, 1988, appeared only 36 hours after the incident: “An attempt to hijack an airliner was stopped. Most of the criminals have been killed. There are dead. Assistance was rendered to the victims on the spot. The Prosecutor's Office of the USSR initiated a criminal case. On the third day it turned out: the stewardess and three passengers were shot dead, four terrorists and their mother committed suicide, dozens of people were crippled, the plane burned to the ground. And the most incredible thing: the hijackers are famous musicians, a large jazz family, the Irkutsk "Seven Simeons" famous throughout the country.
The ensemble "Seven Simeons" was created in 1983, and it was made up of members of the same family - the Ovechkin brothers: Vasily, Dmitry, Oleg, Sasha, Igor, Misha and Sergey. By the time of the events described, the elder Vasily was 26 years old, the younger Serezha was only 9. The brothers toured the country, were participants in the Moscow Festival of Youth and Students, and once even went to perform in Japan. They were shown on TV, a documentary film was made about them, in all respects they fit the model of an exemplary Soviet family.
Adfaver.ruOriginating from peasants, Siberians, they lived in a wooden house without amenities on the outskirts of Irkutsk, milked cows, mowed grass and at the same time played musical instruments and were drawn to art. In addition to sons, there were four more sisters in the family and their mother, the mother-heroine Ninel Sergeevna. What pushed this wonderful family in all respects to take such a terrible step? And what exactly happened on board the Tu-154 on March 8, 1988?
The chronology of events was as follows. The Ovechkins went on tour with the whole family to Leningrad. Only their elder sister Lyudmila was not with them. By that time she had married and had been living her life separately from the rest for several years. The Ovechkins came on board. They were recognized and smiled at. The large double bass did not fit into the X-ray machine, and they did not even examine it. Missed so. After all, the Simeons have been considered almost the main Irkutsk attraction for several years. During the flight, the brothers played chess and talked. Oleg was joking about something with the flight attendant Vasilyeva. Everything went on as usual, but suddenly, after refueling in Kurgan, the Ovechkins took shotguns from the case for the double bass and demanded that the crew go to London. It turned out that they slightly increased the dimensions of the case in advance so that it could not fit into the transilluminator. They hoped that the workers of the local airport would not manually search the members of an exemplary Soviet family. And their calculation turned out to be correct.
Historytime.ru
So the Ovechkins demanded to be taken to London. From the ground, the crew was ordered to convince the terrorists that without another refueling, the plane would not be able to reach England. Then the brothers demanded that the refueling be made in some capitalist country, and they were promised that the plane would be landed in Finland. But in fact, they were not going to let anyone go to Finland. Moreover, by order of the commander of the North-Western Air Defense, the Tu-154 was accompanied by a military fighter. As is clear from a number of publications on the subject, the fighter pilot was ordered to destroy a passenger plane, along with all passengers, if only he tried to make an attempt to take off from the country.
For the operation to neutralize terrorists, the operational headquarters chose a military airfield in the village of Veshchevo near Vyborg. The crew was informed that in order to bring the capture group to full readiness, it was necessary to drag out a little more time. They were ordered to explain to the Ovechkins that if they fired even one shot, they would be exterminated like mad dogs. In the meantime, “in conditions of democratization,” they face 2-3 years in prison at most. Flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya came out to the Ovechkins. She reassured them and convinced them that the plane was landing in the Finnish city of Kotka. The brothers practically believed it, but then they saw that native Soviet soldiers armed with machine guns were hurrying along the runway of this “Finnish” city to the landing site. Out of desperation and rage, Dmitry shot the stewardess. As a result, Tamara Zharkaya became the only victim of the Ovechkin family. All other people were killed and maimed by those who came to save them.
Krasvozduh.ru
Subsequently, it turned out that the special forces who arrived to neutralize the terrorists, in fact, were completely untrained in actions in such operations. They were ordinary police officers who knew how to deal with street hooligans, but did not know the specifics of working in the narrow space of an aircraft. One of the policemen participating in the operation stated this directly in court. Four commandos entered the cockpit through the windows. A few more people were able to get into the luggage compartment. What to do next, apparently, they did not know. The police officers abruptly opened the cockpit door and started shooting. At the same time, not a single terrorist was injured, but they hit three ordinary passengers at once. The musicians also wounded both commandos with return fire, and those who were bleeding were also evacuated from the plane through the window. The policemen, who were in the luggage compartment, began to shoot through the floor, but these shots did not cause any harm to the armed brothers. True, one of the bullets hit the unarmed 9-year-old Seryozha, the youngest member of the ensemble, in the thigh.
Krasvozduh.ru
Realizing that their situation was hopeless, the Ovechkins decided to kill themselves. They surrounded Sasha, who had been holding the bomb all this time, and connected the wires. However, the explosion was so weak that only Sasha died from it, the rest were not even injured. Then the brothers began to shoot at themselves. Dimitri killed himself first. Then Oleg. And Vasily first shot his mother and then shot himself. Of the direct participants in the crime, only 17-year-old Igor survived. According to him, he did not want to die, and when he saw that his mother's skull had "opened" after Vasily's shot, he hid in the toilet. Meanwhile, a fire started in the plane due to an explosion, and there was only one fire engine at the Veshchevo airfield, which the leadership of the headquarters so prudently chose to carry out a special rescue operation. Passengers opened one of the doors of the plane and began to escape from the fire, jumping from a four-meter height onto a concrete runway. Almost all of them broke their legs. Someone broke his spine.
But below, instead of help, they were waiting for the beatings of the military standing there. According to the recollections of the passengers, they were beaten severely. The rescuers feared that the Ovechkins might be among those jumping out, and therefore, just in case, they beat everyone, including women. They beat them on the head with boots, beat them with rifle butts, cursed, ordered them not to move, and at least one of those who moved was shot in the lower back. By the time new fire trucks arrived from Vyborg, the plane had completely burned out. Subsequently, nine charred corpses were found in the cabin: four Ovechkin brothers, their mother, flight attendant Tamara Zharkay and three passengers who were accidentally killed by the capture group. Thus, the hijacking of a Soviet plane to England was brilliantly prevented.
A year later, a film crew that once shot a documentary about wonderful musical brothers shot another documentary - this time about the events of March 8th. The authors of the film tried to get a comment from Colonel Bystrov, who commanded the operational headquarters that day.
- Why should I comment on something to you? the colonel was surprised. - What the heck? I'll make a call right now. Is it clear to you or not?
Youtube
And yet what made seemingly successful people, recognized musicians, take such a crazy step? There are different points of view on this. Now the media are inclined to the version that the mother of the Ovechkins acted as the engine in this whole story, who, for the sake of her ambitions, was ready for anything - even for killing innocent people. The motherland gave her family everything: recognition, prospects, two three-room apartments in Irkutsk, and she dreamed of fairy tales about the sweet life in the West. It is believed that the tour of the ensemble to Japan served as an impetus for this idea. There, the Simeons saw a brighter life than in Irkutsk, and coveted it.
Adfaver.ru
But the main thing was not even that. It was November 1987, perestroika had begun, and, according to KGB worker Zvonarev, the employees of their department at that time began to watch tourists abroad less vigilantly. They still accompanied all groups, but their discipline was shaken: instead of harshly suppressing all unwanted contacts of Soviet people who had escaped to freedom, they went shopping and relaxed. As a result, Oleg Ovechkin was able to meet some man in Japan, and he promised their ensemble a good contract with a recording studio in London. The brothers tried to get to the American embassy in Tokyo right then, but they had no money, and the taxi driver refused to take them for the golden ring. And then the brothers decided to return. Moreover, there was no mother or sisters with them in Japan, and in those days not returning from abroad meant forever saying goodbye to relatives. And the Ovechkins decided to prepare at home for the escape and carry it out with the whole family.
Russian newspaper
According to another version, the sons, not the mother, were the initiators of the escape. And it was not greed and vanity that pushed them to this step, but the poverty and futility of their lives. They grew up in a very difficult family. Ninel Sergeevna lost her parents when she was not yet 6 years old. My father died at the front in 1942, and a year later, a watchman shot my mother on a state farm field. She tried to take out 8 potatoes from there. Ninel grew up in an orphanage. I have been a salesperson all my life. After her daughter died in childbirth, she vowed to give birth as many times as God would give. She eventually gave birth to eleven children. Her husband drank heavily. So that, getting drunk, he began to shoot out the window, and everyone who was nearby, just in case, had to fall on the floor away from sin and lie without moving. Some sources report that in 1984, defending himself from beatings, his own children killed him.
nosecret.com
However, other media say that he simply died, leaving his wife and 11 children to survive as best they can. The family had to struggle all the time with everyday disorder, and then with poverty. After they were given two three-room apartments, life only got worse. Previously, they at least lived on subsistence farming: cows, pigs, rabbits, chickens, a garden. Now I had to make do with my mother's pension of 52 rubles a month and the 80-ruble salaries of two children. Music did not bring them money in the USSR. Tours, diplomas, TV shows, but they were not allowed to hold paid concerts. And then for the first time they were abroad and saw a completely different life. At that time, they had no way to try to leave officially. And then they decided to hijack the plane.
They will show everyone that they have real weapons, they will scare them, and they will be released. The authorities will not risk the lives of dozens of people in order to keep some Ovechkins on their territory. But in this the brothers, alas, miscalculated. From the testimony at the trial, the captain of the Tu-154 Kupriyanova: he was asked about the instructions that exist in such situations. One of the points was listed in "in exceptional cases, fulfill the requirements of the hijackers."
- Did you try to comply with their demands? asked the people's assessor.
“I don’t understand,” the commander replied, “why their demands had to be met.
- What do you mean why? Well, maybe there would be no such result.
- I believe that the best outcome was to land in your own country, at your own airfield, - said Kupriyanov.
The trial took place in the airport building in Irkutsk. During the trial, angry letters were sent to the court demanding that all the surviving Ovechkins be executed:
"Do not judge, but tie in the square to the tops of birches and tear them apart."
Maksimova, teacher
"Shoot everyone with a TV show."
Tonin, the internationalist warrior
“We ask you to endure the highest punishment of execution, so that they know what the homeland is.”
On behalf of the party meeting, party organizer Goncharov.
But only two surviving members of the Ovechkin family were tried - Igor, the very one who did not want to die and hid in the toilet, and Olga. The older sister Lyudmila did not take part in the hijacking and did not even know about the plans of her brothers. The two younger brothers and two younger sisters of the Ovechkins were minors, and they were also not tried, having been sent to a boarding school. Olga was pregnant at the trial. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison, and she gave birth in prison.
Russian newspaper
Igor was sentenced to 8 years.
Russian newspaper
As a result, all the children, including Olga's daughter born in prison, were taken in by the older sister of the Ovechkins, Lyudmila. She herself had three by that time.
Russian newspaper
It became eight. Igor and Olga served only half a term each. Olga left the colony embittered, began to drink a lot, and a few years later her cohabitant killed her. Igor led a musical group in the colony, played in restaurants outside, but also drank, was arrested for drug trafficking and died, as they say, under strange circumstances in a pre-trial detention center. One of the younger sisters, Ulyana, drank a lot, threw herself under a car twice, survived, and lives on disability benefits. The youngest Sergey failed several times to enter the music school, now nothing is known about him. And finally, Mikhail is the most talented of all, the one whom the Ovechkins music teacher called a real black musician, meaning that he feels jazz like a genuine black jazz player. He went to Spain, played in street jazz bands, lived on alms, later suffered a stroke, and was confined to a wheelchair.
The most high-profile hijackings in the USSR
During the Soviet period from 1954 to 1989, 57 attempts to hijack aircraft were made on the territory of the USSR. Schoolchildren and students were involved in at least four cases of aircraft hijacking.
Tu-104 hijacking
The most terrible in terms of the number of victims was the hijacking of the Tu-104 aircraft in May 1973 (flight Moscow - Chita). At an altitude of 6500, a policeman accompanying the plane shot the hijacker Tengiz Rzayev in the back, who was holding a bomb. The plane broke up in the air, killing 81 people.
Tu-134 hijacking
On November 18, 1983, the Tu-134 aircraft was flying on the route Batumi - Kyiv - Leningrad. There were 57 passengers on board, including seven terrorists - the children of high-ranking parents from Georgia carried weapons through the "deputy's hall". The group was headed by the artist of the film studio "Georgia-Film", the son of Professor Joseph Tsereteli. Having taken stewardess Valentina Krutikova hostage, the terrorists broke into the cockpit and demanded to fly to Turkey, and in an attempt to disarm them, they killed two pilots. Another pilot was injured, but was able to injure two of the hijackers. The pilots subsequently locked themselves in the cockpit and made drastic maneuvers to knock the invaders off their feet. Those, in turn, opened fire on the passengers, killed the flight attendant Valentina Krutikova and one passenger, and also seriously injured 10 more passengers of the plane (one of the passengers was killed by mistake by a special forces group after landing, when he ran out of the plane and was mistaken for a terrorist).
On November 19, as a result of the special operation “Nabat”, the criminals were captured at the Tbilisi airport and the passengers were released. The surviving hijackers were sentenced to death, with the exception of student Tinatin Petviashvili - she received 14 years in prison.
An-24 hijacking
On October 15, 1970, the Aeroflot An-24 aircraft flew Batumi - Krasnodar. There were 46 passengers on board at the time. Pranas Brazinskas, who worked as a store manager in Vilnius, and his 13-year-old son Algirdas sat in the front row. Both had clippings. A few minutes after takeoff, Pranas Brazinskas called the flight attendant and demanded that the plane be turned around and landed in Turkey. For failure to comply with the order, the hijackers threatened with death. They killed the stewardess and shot the commander of the ship in the spine. The plane landed in Turkey.
In October 1970, the USSR demanded that Turkey immediately extradite the criminals, but this requirement was not met. The Turks decided to judge the hijackers themselves. They were convicted of theft and murder, but four years later they were released under an amnesty. Later they lived in the USA. In 2002, Pranas Brazinskas was killed by his own son in California.
Tu-154 hijacking in Pakistan
On August 19, 1990, a Tu-154 aircraft was hijacked by prisoners from the temporary detention facility in the city of Neryungri. The hijackers demanded that the plane be sent to Pakistan. 15 prisoners were transported to the city of Yakutsk by Tu-154 aircraft. Five minutes later, a “dangerous” signal was received on the aircraft commander’s console. The terrorists managed to carry a sawn-off shotgun on board the plane, which was handed over to the bandits by one of the friends of the leader of the hijackers. They passed off a piece of laundry soap as a bomb. The prisoners took the passengers and three militia escorts hostage, taking away their weapons.
On the afternoon of August 19, the plane landed again in Neryungri. The terrorists demanded machine guns, walkie-talkies and parachutes. On the evening of August 19, the plane flew to the city of Krasnoyarsk, and at 23:00 Moscow time landed in Tashkent. Four hijackers, who had not serious charges, preferred to surrender to the authorities and remain in the USSR. On August 20, the plane with 36 hostages and 11 terrorists remaining on board flew to Pakistan, where it landed in the city of Karachi. After landing at an airport in Pakistan, the hijackers were arrested. They were later convicted. All terrorists were sentenced to death. Two prisoners hanged themselves in prison, one died from heatstroke. In 1991, the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The bandits themselves filed appeals for their return to the USSR, but they were denied. In September 1998, the terrorists were granted amnesty in honor of the 50th anniversary of Pakistan's independence. Two natives of Ukraine remained in Pakistan, six hijackers were extradited to Russia. The court of Yakutia gave them the most severe sentence - 15 years in prison.
It happened almost 30 years ago, on a holiday on March 8, 1988. The large and friendly Ovechkin family known throughout the country - the mother-heroine and 10 children from 9 to 28 years old - flew from Irkutsk to a music festival in Leningrad.
They brought with them a bunch of instruments, from a double bass to a banjo, and everyone around them smiled happily, recognizing the "Seven Simeons" - Siberian nugget brothers playing incendiary jazz.
But at a 10-kilometer altitude, people's favorites suddenly took out sawn-off shotguns and a bomb from their cases and ordered to fly to London, otherwise they would start killing passengers and generally blow up the plane. An attempted hijacking turned into an unheard-of tragedy 
“Wolves in the shoes of the Ovechkins” – this is how the stunned Soviet press later wrote about them. How did it happen that sunny, smiling guys turned into terrorists? From the very beginning, the mother was blamed for everything, allegedly raising her eldest sons as ambitious and cruel. Plus, a noisy glory somehow easily and immediately fell upon them, and it completely blew their heads off. But also, some saw Ovechkin as sufferers, victims of the absurd Soviet system, who went to crime just to "live like a human being."
"Family-sect"
A huge family lived in a small private house on 8 acres on the outskirts of Irkutsk: mother Ninel Sergeevna, 7 sons and 4 daughters. The eldest, Lyudmila, got married early and left; she had nothing to do with the story of the theft. The father died 4 years before these events - they say he was beaten to death by his grown-up sons Vasily and Dmitry for his drunken antics. From childhood, under the command of the mother "Lie down!" they hid from dad's gun, from which he tried to shoot at them through the window. Ovechkin in 1985. From left to right: Olga, Tatyana, Dmitry, Ninel Sergeevna with Ulyana and Sergey, Alexander, Mikhail, Oleg, Vasily. The seventh brother Igor with a camera remained behind the scenes.
Mother - a woman "affectionate, but strict" (according to Tatyana) - enjoyed unquestioning authority. She herself grew up as an orphan: during the hungry war years, her own mother, the widow of a front-line soldier, was killed by a drunken watchman when she was secretly digging up collective farm potatoes. Ninel developed an iron character and raised her sons the same way, only with them all this turned into ruthlessness and unscrupulousness.
Ninel Sergeevna Ovechkina
The Ovechkins were not friends with their neighbors, they lived apart by their own clan, they led a subsistence economy. Later, their unanimity and self-isolation began to be compared with sectarian fanaticism.
Siberian nuggets
All the guys in the family studied at a music school, played instruments, and in 1983 founded the Seven Simeons jazz ensemble, named after the Russian folk tale about crafty twins. Two years later, after participating in the Jazz-85 festival in Tbilisi and the broadcast of the Central Television "Wider Circle", they became all-Union celebrities.
"Seven Simeons" on the streets of Irkutsk, 1986
A documentary film was made about an amazing family, the pride of all Siberia. The guys behaved wonderfully, the film crew was delighted with them, but it was hard with their mother. One of the editors of the tape, Tatyana Zyryanova, later said that Ninel Ovechkina was already filled with pride at that time, she was indignant that the family was “showed as peasants” and not “artists” and decided that they wanted to humiliate them that way.
Ninel Sergeevna. Frame from the film.
However, the adult sons also had pride. In her diary, the mother somehow gave them all characteristics, and so she wrote about the elder Vasily: “Proud, arrogant, unkind.” It was under his influence that the brothers contemptuously rejected their studies at the famous Gnesinka, where they were admitted without exams. "Simeons" imagined themselves as extraordinary talents, ready-made professionals who lacked only world recognition. They actually played very well - for amateur performances, but over time, without experienced guidance, under the tutelage of their mother, who already considered them geniuses, they inevitably degraded. The audience was rather impressed by their fraternal cohesion and touched by Seryozha, who was as tall as his own banjo.
Shine and poverty
Discontent and anger accumulated among the Ovechkins for another reason: All-Union glory did not bring any money. Although the state gave them two three-room apartments at once in a good house, leaving the old suburban area as well, they did not live happily ever after, as in a fairy tale. The family quit farming, and there was no way to make money with music: they were simply forbidden to perform paid concerts.
"Seven Simeons" with his mother near his rural house
The abandoned Ovechkin house today
The Ovechkins dreamed of their own family cafe, where the brothers would play jazz, and the mother and sisters would be in charge of the kitchen. In a couple of years, in the 90s, their dreams could come true, but so far private business in the USSR was impossible. The Ovechkins decided that they were born in the wrong country, and set about to leave forever for the “foreign paradise”, which they got an idea of after having been on tour in Japan in 1987. Simeons spent three weeks in the city of Kanazawa, Irkutsk’s sister city, and received a cultural shock: shops are bursting with goods, showcases shine brightly, sidewalks are illuminated from underground, vehicles drive silently, streets are washed with shampoo and even flowers in toilets, as their sons enthusiastically told mothers and sisters. Part of the family, according to the then principle, was not released, so that the guest performers would not think of running away to the capitalists, dooming those who remained in their homeland to shame and poverty.
"We'll blow up the plane!"
Returning with a completely changed consciousness, the brothers started an escape, and their mother, impressed by the stories about a well-fed and beautiful foreign country, supported them. Decided that if you run, then all at once. The only way they saw an armed hijacking of the aircraft - by that time there were numerous stories of hijackings, including successful ones. In case of failure, there was a firm agreement - to commit suicide. Under their plans, the Ovechkins chose the flight Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad, the Tu-154 plane, departure on March 8. On board, in addition to 11 hijackers, there were 65 passengers and 8 crew members. The weapons - a pair of sawn-off hunting rifles with a hundred rounds of ammunition and homemade bombs - were carried in a double bass case. From previous trips, the brothers learned that the tool does not pass into the metal detector, and that, having recognized the Simeons, the luggage is inspected superficially, just for show. And here - the checkers have a festive mood, and the youngest children, Seryozha and Ulyana, are trying with might and main, distracting them with ridiculous antics.
The first part of the journey, the "artists" behaved cheerfully and peacefully. We made friends with flight attendants, especially with 28-year-old Tamara Zharka, showed them family photos. According to one version, Tamara was a friend of Vasily and for his sake she flew not on her shift. When, on the second leg of the route, 24-year-old Dmitry Ovechkin handed her a note: “Go to England (London). Don't go down or we'll blow up the plane. You are under our control,” she took it all for a joke and laughed lightheartedly. Then, until the very end, Tamara did everything possible to calm the terrorists, who every minute threatened to start killing passengers and blow up the cabin. She managed to convince them that the plane, which did not have enough fuel to reach London, would land for refueling in Finland, when in fact it landed at the Veshchevo military airfield near Vyborg, where the capture team was already ready. On the gates of one of the hangars, AIR FORCE was specially written in large, but the hijackers saw a fuel truck with the Russian inscription “Flammable”, recognized the Soviet soldiers and realized that they had been deceived. Enraged, Dmitry shot Tamara point-blank.
Tamara Hot
The mother begins to command her sons: “Don’t talk to anyone! Get a cab!" The older brothers unsuccessfully try to break open the armored door of the pilots with a folding ladder. Meanwhile, amateur attack aircraft - simple police patrols with no experience in dealing with hostage situations - penetrate through the observation windows and hatches into the front and rear of the aircraft and, shielding themselves with shields, open indiscriminate fire, falling into innocent passengers. Realizing that there is no way out of the trap, the mother resolutely orders to blow up the plane - to die for everyone and immediately, as agreed. But the bomb did not even hurt anyone, only caused a fire. Then the four older brothers take turns shooting from one sawn-off shotgun, before committing suicide, Vasily puts a bullet in his mother's head, again on her orders. All this is happening in front of the younger children, who, in horror and incomprehension of what is happening, cling to their 28-year-old sister Olga. 17-year-old Igor manages to hide in the toilet. Everything could have ended with the death of half the family of terrorists, but the assault squad aggravated the tragedy. Passengers who jumped out of the burning plane onto the concrete runway in panic were greeted with warning bursts of machine-gun fire and beaten indiscriminately with rifle butts and boots. A dozen and a half people were injured and maimed, some were disabled. Four hostages were wounded by a special group during a firefight in the cabin. Three more died, suffocating in the smoke. The plane burned down. The remains of the stewardess Tamara were identified only the next morning by a melted wrist watch.
Remains of a burned-out Tu-154, April 1988
The result of the tragedy
9 people died - Ninel Ovechkina, four eldest sons, a flight attendant and three passengers. 19 people were injured - 15 passengers, two Ovechkins, including the youngest 9-year-old Seryozha, and two riot police. Only six of the 11 Ovechkins who were on board survived - Olga and 5 of her underage brothers and sisters. Of the survivors, two went to court - Olga and 17-year-old Igor. The rest, by age, were not subject to criminal liability, they were transferred under the care of a married sister, Lyudmila, who was not involved in the capture. An open trial took place in Irkutsk that autumn. The hall was crowded, there were not enough seats. Passengers and crew were witnesses. Both defendants, testifying, stated that they "somehow did not think" about the passengers when they planned to blow up the plane. Olga admitted her guilt in part and asked for leniency.
Olga in court. She was 7 months pregnant at the time.
Igor sometimes recognized partially, then completely denied and asked to be forgiven and not be deprived of his freedom.
Moreover, at the trial, Igor, whom his mother described in his diary as “too self-confident and roguish,” tried to put all the blame for what happened on the former head of the ensemble, the Irkutsk musician-teacher Vladimir Romanenko, thanks to whom the Simeons got to jazz festivals. Like, it was he who inspired the older brothers with the idea that there is no jazz in the USSR and that recognition can only be achieved abroad. However, the teenager could not stand the confrontation with the teacher and admitted that he had slandered him.
Vladimir Romanenko is rehearsing with his brothers. Igor is at the piano. 1986
The court received bags of letters from Soviet citizens who were eager for a show of punishment. “Shoot with the performance shown on TV,” writes a veteran Afghan. “Tie them to the tops of birches and tear them apart,” a woman teacher calls (!). “Shoot so that they know what the Motherland is,” advises the party secretary on behalf of the assembly. The humane Soviet court of the era of perestroika and glasnost decided otherwise: 8 years in prison for Igor, 6 years for Olga. In reality, they served 4 years. Olga gave birth to a daughter in the colony, she was also given to Lyudmila.
Olga with a child in prison
The further fate of the Ovechkins
The last time journalists asked about them was in 2013, on the 25th anniversary of the tragedy. Here's what was known at the time. Olga traded fish in the market, gradually became an inveterate drunkard. In 2004, she was beaten to death by a drunk cohabitant during a domestic quarrel. Igor played the piano in restaurants in Irkutsk and drank himself. In 1999, a journalist from MK talked to him - then he was indignant at the fresh film Mom with Mordyukova, Menshikov and Mashkov, based on the story of the Ovechkins, and threatened to sue director Denis Evstigneev. He eventually received a second sentence for selling drugs and was killed by a cellmate.
Igor Ovechkin
Sergey, together with Igor, played in restaurants and helped his older sister Lyudmila with the housework. Then he went missing.
Igor and Serezha at a rehearsal in 1986.
9-year-old Seryozha is a witness in court, autumn 1988.
Ulyana, who at the time of the hijacking was 10 years old, gave birth to a child at 16, went down and drank herself. She thinks that flight ruined her life. Because of drunken quarrels with her husband, she twice threw herself under a car. Receives a disability pension.
Frame from documentary program 2013
Tatyana, who was 14 in 1988, lives near Irkutsk with her husband and child. She managed to establish a life more or less safely.
Shot from a 2006 shoot
And, finally, Mikhail, the most talented of all, who played the trombone, according to the teacher, “like a real black man,” is the only one of the Ovechkins who managed to escape abroad. In Spain, he performed in street jazz bands, lived on alms. He later suffered a stroke and ended up in a wheelchair. As of 2013, he lived in a rehabilitation center in Barcelona and ... dreamed of returning to Irkutsk.
One thing is clear as the years go by. Whether from pride, lack of intelligence, or lack of information, the Ovechkins sincerely believed that they would be welcomed abroad with open arms, and not considered dangerous terrorists who had taken innocent people hostage. The “Simeons” were dazzled by the reception in Japan – full houses, applause, promises of fame and fortune from local journalists and producers… They didn’t realize that they aroused the interest of foreigners more like circus monkeys, a funny souvenir from a closed country with its Siberia and “gulags” than like musicians. As one Irkutsk publication concluded, “these were simple, rude people with simple, rude dreams - to live like a human being. This is what killed them."
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On March 8, 1988, the Ovechkin family hijacked and attempted to hijack a Tu-154B-2 passenger plane. Diletant.ru remembers how it was.
In 1988, the Ovechkin family consisted of a mother and 11 children (father, Dmitry Dmitrievich, died on May 3, 1984), including 7 sons, who were members of the Seven Simeons family jazz ensemble and were officially listed as musicians in the Dosug city park association.
The jazz group "Seven Simeons" was considered the hallmark of Irkutsk. Vasily was the first to come to the Palace of Pioneers to practice drums. The younger ones followed: Dmitry on the trumpet, Oleg on the clarinet and saxophone. When Sasha and Igor joined them, Vasily asked the head of the pop department of the art school, Romanenko, to work with them. Convinced that the five brothers enjoyed constant success at concerts, Romanenko took up the ensemble. And when the grown younger Misha and Seryozha began to perform with them, Vasily came up with the name “Seven Simeons” for the ensemble, after an old Russian fairy tale and seven brothers. Victory at festivals and competitions gave the brothers confidence in their own strength. The star in the fate of the ensemble was 85 years. Successful performances in Moscow and Kemerovo, Tbilisi and Riga attract close attention to Simeons. Director Hertz Frank is making a film about them, which is called "Seven Simeons".
During the foreign tour of the Seven Simeons ensemble in 1987 in Tokyo, members of the Ovechkin family decided to leave the Soviet Union. After returning to the USSR, the Simeons began to prepare to flee abroad.
The Ovechkins decided to hijack a plane that would fly within the Union. Dmitry Ovechkin made sawn-off shotguns from guns, and also assembled three pipe bombs, one of which was detonated in order to evaluate the effect of the explosion. He also made a double bottom in the double bass and secured weapons, bombs and a hundred rounds of ammunition there. The Ovechkins also agreed - if the escape fails, the whole family will explode.
On March 8, 1988, the Ovechkin family - Ninel and her 10 children - arrived at the airport to board the Tu-154 aircraft, which was flying along the route Irkutsk - Kurgan - Leningrad. At the time of the capture, Ninel Sergeevna Ovechkina was 51 years old, Lyudmila - 32 years old, Olga - 28, Vasily - 26, Dmitry - 24, Oleg - 21, Alexander - 19, Igor - 17, Tatyana - 14, Mikhail - 13, Ulyana - 10 and Sergey - 9 years old. The eldest daughter Lyudmila, having married, lived separately from the rest of the family and did not take part in the hijacking of the plane.
Usually, the mother only saw off her sons on tour. And their sister Olga went on trips to help on the road, to look after the younger ones. But on that day, tickets for the whole family lay at the front desk: a mother and ten children. The musicians were recognized and practically overlooked. The largest item was the double bass, the employee asked to put it on the table and limited herself to a superficial examination. At that moment, a passenger standing nearby heard a strange conversation. One of the musicians said: “They clicked!” Another interrupted him: “Shut up!” Landing was announced and at 13:30 local time the Ovechkin family boarded TU154.
During boarding, passengers were asked to be seated in the first cabin. There were enough places. There went the mother with the younger ones and Olga. The older brothers went with the tools to the second salon. Sasha and Dmitry carefully carried the double bass. The flight attendant Aleksey Dvornitsky was still surprised: “How do they play it if it is so heavy ?!” Alex then remembered that a month ago, two guys were carrying exactly the same. In mid-February, Sasha and Dmitry really flew from Leningrad to Irkutsk. They wanted to check how baggage is checked at Pulkovo airport. The brothers noticed that the double bass placed in the interscope barely extends across the width; it was enough to slightly increase its dimensions to avoid translucence. A massive metal pickup could also solve the second problem. Explain the presence of metal when passing through the control frame. Returning to Irkutsk, Dmitry made a clamp from a meat grinder. It was hard to think of another more original way to carry weapons on board an aircraft. And by the time the TU 154 took off, this weapon was already on board the aircraft.
2 Capture
At 14:53, when the plane was flying in the Vologda region, the two older Ovechkin brothers got up and forbade the rest of the passengers to leave their seats, threatening them with sawn-off shotguns. At 15:01, Vasily Ovechkin handed over a note to flight attendant Irina Vasilyeva demanding to change course and land in London or another city in the UK under the threat of an aircraft explosion. At 15:15, the board reported that there was fuel left for 1 hour and 35 minutes of flight.
In accordance with the Air Code of the USSR, under the circumstances, the aircraft crew had the right to make their own decisions. In order not to put passengers at risk, the crew initially decided to fly abroad. But the closer the liner approached Leningrad, the clearer it became: it was impossible to reach the nearest Finnish or Swedish airfield. In Kurgan, the plane was refueled, but just enough to fly to Leningrad, in extreme cases - to the alternate airfield in Tallinn. If, however, to follow to Finland, then at an unknown airfield we would have to maneuver, study the approaches, and here the fuel could run out.
The situation was complicated by the fact that the Tu-154 crew had no experience and was not prepared for international flights: they did not know the location of the air corridors and the foreign flight separation system; domestic aircraft did not have the necessary handbooks on radio communications, landing approaches, etc. to catastrophic consequences.
Another problem was the “language barrier”, on the Tu-154 domestic flight, only the navigator knew English.
At 15:30, flight engineer Innokenty Stupakov went into the cabin and, as a result of negotiations, managed to explain that there was not enough fuel to fly to the UK, after which he managed to convince the terrorists to allow the plane to refuel in Finland.
3 Landing at the Veshchevo airfield. Storm
At 16:05, the aircraft landed at the Veshchevo military airfield near the Finnish border. It was announced over the loudspeaker in the cabin that the airliner was landing for refueling at the airport in the Finnish city of Kotka.
Seeing Soviet soldiers through the windows, the Ovechkins realized that they had been deceived. The Ovechkin brothers demanded to take off immediately, tried to break down the cockpit door, threatened to start killing passengers. Dmitry Ovechkin shot and killed flight attendant Tamara Zharkaya.
To defuse the situation, the commander started the engines and asked the headquarters for permission to start moving along the runway until both capture groups in the cockpit and the luggage compartment were ready for the assault. There was no communication between the groups, the walkie-talkies were denied. Because of the noise of the engine, they communicated with the help of notes. When the plane stopped at the end of the runway to turn around, two more riot police officers with a note clung to the cockpit. The signal for the assault for both groups was to be the beginning of the movement of the aircraft.
At 19:10 the assault began. It was carried out by employees of a special unit of the police patrol service of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of the Leningrad Executive Committee, commanded by police lieutenant colonel S. S. Khodakov. The assault on the aircraft was carried out by a group under the command of Art. police lieutenant A. M. Lagodich from 10 people, police officers from the Vyborg GOVD were in the cordon.
One group was supposed to break into the first salon from the cab, the other into the second salon, through the hatches in the floor. In the first salon, Oleg, firing back from a double-barreled sawn-off shotgun, did not even allow the capture group to leave the cab, injuring two riot policemen. In the second cabin, unable to get inside through the hatches in the floor, because of the carpet, the capture group fired blindly. Dmitry fired back from a single-barrel sawn-off shotgun. People in horror hid behind armchairs, crawled to the floor. The salon looked completely empty. Having shot at the clip, the riot police closed and began to evacuate the wounded comrades. Oleg Ovechkin was wounded, the youngest Sergei was wounded. Igor Ovechkin was hit by a bullet near the kitchen.
The whole family got together. The name was Igor. But he did not respond, he did not want to die. Excerpts from the testimony of Mikhail Ovechkin: “The brothers realized that they were surrounded and decided to shoot themselves. Dima shot himself under the chin first. Then Vasily and Oleg approached Sasha, stood around the explosive device, and Sasha set fire to it. When the explosion was heard, none of the guys were hurt, only Sasha's trousers caught fire, as well as the upholstery of the chair, and the glass of the porthole was knocked out. The fire started. Then Sasha took a sawn-off shotgun from Oleg and shot himself… When Oleg fell, his mother asked Vasya to shoot her… He shot his mother in the temple. When my mother fell, he told us to run away and shot himself.”
The explosion started the plane on fire. Flight attendants managed to open two hatches and deploy inflatable ladders. Through the other two hatches, some of the passengers in a panic jumped right onto the concrete strip.
As a result of the fire, the aircraft was completely destroyed.
As a result of the terrorist attack, out of 8 crew members and 76 passengers (including 11 Ovechkins), 9 people died: five terrorists (Ninel Ovechkina and her four eldest sons), flight attendant T.I. Zharkaya and three passengers; 19 people were injured and injured (two Ovechkins, two police officers and 15 passengers).
The remains of the Ovechkins were numbered, packed in plastic bags and taken away for examination. They buried near Vyborg, in the village of Veshchevo under the numbers.
Olga Ovechkina in court
The trial lasted 7 months. 18 volumes of the case were written with different testimonies. And on September 23, the Leningrad Regional Court ruled: “Olga Ovechkina was sentenced to 6 years in prison for the armed seizure of an aircraft with the aim of hijacking outside the USSR, Igor Ovechkin to 8. Four - Sergey, Uliana, Tatyana and Mikhail - were released from criminal liability by infancy."