Russian secret service behind the latest Hungarian airspace breach?

Last Wednesday, a small plane flew illegally across several NATO countries, including Hungary. Now the Lithuanian pilot has broken the silence about the situation. 

At 5.30 pm last Wednesday, an old, but renovated, plane arrived in Hungary from Slovakia and took off in the Debrecen area without a permit. 8 minutes later, it was captured by the Hungarian Gripen, however, the pilot did not respond to radio calls or visual signals, and at 17.49 he left for Romania.

The small plane flew over Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania.

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The pilot explains

To get more insight into what happened, hvg360 reached out to the pilot. Bronis Zaronskis, 72, said he had sold the Piper PA-23-250 for € 29,000 and the new customers told him that they wanted to renovate and resell the vehicle.

In addition, the Lithuanian man believed that the customers could have been Romanians, Ukrainians, Serbs or Bulgarians.

Interestingly, the man denies that the new owners would have committed any kind of offense, except that they did not wait for the bureaucrats to issue the appropriate papers for the machine.

“I don’t know why they landed there and what happened. Something could have happened. I wouldn’t say they left. They landed normally, then put the tarpaulin on the plane, they did everything right. And what should they have done, sit next to the plane? They went somewhere. Probably on a business trip.” – explained the previous owner of the plane.

Blurry details

Although the previous owner has shared some information about the matter, not everything was addressed.

He said that the customers spoke to him in Russian. However, the reason for this could be that he has studied in Moscow during Soviet times and therefore, he was fluent in Russian.

Strangely, the pilot stated that the sales contract itself had already been signed in another foreign language, and therefore, he did not remember its contents – reports index.hu.

But what is even more mysterious is that he did not want to tell exactly what company bought the plane. His reasoning was that he had not received permission to do so.

Investigation underway

A week later, the matter is still being investigated by Bulgarian authorities. They have been looking for traces of illegal goods (drugs, weapons) on the spot, but so far no such cases have been found. It is also possible, however,  that the plane was used to help someone escape who was not able to leave Lithuania legally.

What is more, hvg360 also raised the possibility that the Russian secret service might be behind the action. Of course, the aim in this case could have been to provoke or test NATO’s air defense.

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Source: index.hu, hvg.hu