Mathias Rust (born 1 June 1968)[1] is a German aviator known for his flight that ended with a landing near Red Square in Moscow on 28 May 1987.

Rust said he wanted to create an "imaginary bridge" to the East, and that his flight was intended to reduce tension and suspicion between the two Cold War sides.

[5][6] Rust was sentenced to four years in a general-regime labour camp for violation of border crossing and air traffic regulations, and for provoking an emergency situation upon his landing.

The incident aided Mikhail Gorbachev in the implementation of his reforms, by allowing him to dismiss numerous military officials opposed to his policies.

On 13 May 1987, Rust left Uetersen Airport, near Hamburg and his home town Wedel, in his rented Reims Cessna F172P, registration D-ECJB, which was modified by removing some of the seats and replacing them with auxiliary fuel tanks.

He was later quoted as saying that he had the idea of attempting to reach Moscow even before the departure, and he considered the journey to Iceland (where he visited Hofdi House, the site of unsuccessful talks between the USA's and USSR's governments during October 1986) as a method of testing his piloting skills.

[5] Control personnel presumed an emergency and a rescue effort was organized, including a Finnish Border Guard patrol boat.

They found an oil patch near Sipoo where Rust had disappeared from radar observation, and conducted an underwater search but did not find anything.

At 14:29 he appeared on Soviet Air Defence Forces (PVO) radar and, after failure to reply to an Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) signal, was assigned combat number 8255.

At 14:48, near Gdov, MiG-23 pilot Senior Lieutenant A. Puchnin observed a white sport airplane similar to a Yakovlev Yak-12 and asked for permission to engage, but was denied.

A later inquiry found that trolleybus wires normally strung over the bridge—which would have prevented his landing there—had been removed for maintenance that morning, and were replaced the next day.

Two months later, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, and the Supreme Soviet ordered Rust to be released in August 1988 as a goodwill gesture to the West.

[5] Rust's return to Germany on 3 August 1988 was accompanied by huge media attention, but he did not talk to the journalists assembled; his family had sold the exclusive rights to the story to the German magazine Stern for 100,000 DM.

[21] On 24 November 1989, while doing his obligatory community service (Zivildienst) as an orderly in a West German hospital, Rust stabbed a female co-worker who had "apparently rejected him.

[25] Most recently, in 2012, he described himself as an analyst for a Zürich-based investment bank, dividing his time between Hamburg, Switzerland and Asia, and is training to be a yoga teacher.

Rust opined that institutional failures in Western countries to preserve moral standards and democratic ideals were creating mistrust between peoples and governments.