Putin Ordered Plane With 110 People Onboard To Be Shot Out Off The Sky In 2014
Putin ordered plane shot down prior to Sochi games, in an incident which turned out to be a false alarm shortly before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed in a film that he ordered a passenger aircraft which was reported to be carrying a bomb and targeting the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, to be brought down.
In a 2-hour documentary titled Putin and available on Russian social media, Putin told reporter Andrey Kondrashov he received a telephone call from security officers responsible for the Sochi Olympics on February 7, 2014, shortly before the start of the opening ceremony. In the phone call, he was told a plane from Ukraine to Turkey had been hijacked as the Games were about to start. The plane was carrying 110 people on board and reportedly a passenger had announced that he was carrying a bomb and demanded the plane be diverted to Sochi, reporter Andrey Kondrashov says. The plane was of Turkish Pegasus Airlines and a Boeing 737-800, flying from Kharkiv to Istanbul.
In the film, Putin says security officials told him that the emergency procedure in such a situation was to down the plane. "I told them: act according to the plan," Putin says.
However, minutes after he ordered the bringing down of the plane, Putin got another call saying the claim was false and the passenger who had made the bomb threat was intoxicated. The aircraft, was allowed to continued to its destination in Turkey.
Putin arrived at the Olympic venue in Sochi with Olympic officials shortly afterwards, he says. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed Mr Putin's account, Reuters reported.
During the opening ceremony in Sochi, 40,000 people gathered in the city to watch the opening of the Winter Olympics.
The first part of the documentary, entitled Putin, has been posted on social media accounts, including one belonging to key state media manager and commentator Dmitry Kiselyov, and a pro-Kremlin YouTube account.
The incident of the plane’s false alarm falls in the timeline of several weeks of unrest in Ukraine. The unrest in Ukraine in 2014 saw the ousting of then President Viktor Yanukovich who fled to Russia.
Shortly after the 2014 Winter Olympics, Russia annexed the pro-Russian region of Crimea which was part of the Ukrainian peninsula. This event spiraled into the ongoing conflict in Donbas, a pro-Russian Ukrainian region where separatists are fighting the Ukrainian army to gain independence from Kiev.
The release of the film also talks of Putin's family's history with earlier leaders of the Soviet Union like his grandfather being the cook for Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. President Putin's remarks come a week before presidential elections take place in Russia, with the long-serving leader poised to win another term.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 12, 2018 06:27 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).