Word: ilyushin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ilyushin-76 transport flights in and out of the capital are running at a dozen a day, many carrying Soviet soldiers home. Two large Soviet bases north of the city are deserted. The main Soviet hospital has been turned over to Afghans, and Moscow has reduced its embassy staff by two-thirds, to about 100 people. Soviet infantrymen still patrol Kabul's streets, but they expect to be home within days. "It was a mistake to come here," says a trooper in the central shopping area. "And we are never coming back. It is up to the Afghan people...
...narrow ribbon of tarmac at Zvartnots airfield looked like a crowded parking lot: an American military C-141, its tail marked with a large Stars and Stripes, an Algerian transport plane, a commercial Austrian airliner -- in all, about 15 foreign planes, not counting a regular fleet of Soviet Ilyushin 76s and Tupelev 154s. Hundreds of dark-clad figures milled about. The usual tight military control that exists at every Soviet airport seemed to have all but broken down...
Amid the confusion of passing trucks and landing airplanes, my services as a Russian interpreter were in great demand, stretching my technical vocabulary to the limit. I was asked to come quickly and sort out a bizarre accident on the airfield. The wing tip of a passing Ilyushin 76 cargo plane had somehow clipped the tail of a parked Air Europe Boeing 757. Both aircraft were stuck in place. I tried to explain to an ever changing group of airport workers that the British pilot needed a small tow truck and strong steel cables to move his plane forward...
Perestroika has come to the press. Kind of. Emulating the White House, the Kremlin laid on a charter plane (only $4,800 a head) for the Moscow-based press corps to follow Mikhail Gorbachev on his latest round of international travels. But the lumbering Ilyushin-62 jet, dubbed "Glasnost One," proved how far Gorbachev has to go to turn his promises into practice. Caviar and vodka helped while away the 14-hour flight, but the Soviets missed the opportunity -- so dear to U.S. officialdom -- to "spin" the news when they provided no briefings for their captive audience. On the ground...
...reason the Kremlin boss keeps boarding his customized Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-62 and winging off to foreign parts is that he has serious, apparently growing troubles at home. In recent weeks there have been bloody riots in the Caucasus and protests along the Baltic. At a special session of the Supreme Soviet, a few deputies to the traditionally rubber-stamp parliament took glasnost and democratization seriously enough to vote against some of Gorbachev's reforms. These difficulties give Gorbachev two reasons to keep hitting the diplomatic high road: he must reduce international tensions if he / is to devote more resources...