Word: sakhalin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Thus began one of the strangest and least expected confrontations between the superpowers in the annals of U.S. postwar diplomacy. Though the aircraft so wantonly destroyed near the Soviet island of Sakhalin was not American, the distinction scarcely mattered: Flight 007 had left from U.S. territory and carried at least 61 American passengers, including a U.S. Congressman. The incident, moreover, seemed to be a crime against all humanity, a violation of the most fundamental rules of the air on which all the nations of the world, including the Soviet Union, depend in the busy, crowded skies...
According to the account of Secretary Shultz, Flight 007 first crossed the Kamchatka Peninsula, then the Sea of Okhotsk and the island of Sakhalin. Unless it changed course, the airliner apparently would have approached the area around Vladivostok on the Soviet mainland. This cold and bleak region is ordinarily off limits to foreigners...