Russia’s New Af Boss Had Role In Tragedy

Russia’s new air force commander played a central role in the downing of KAL 007 in 1983, relaying orders to shoot down the wayward jet, officials acknowledged Friday.

All 269 people aboard the aircraft died.

Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, who was promoted to air force commander by President Boris Yeltsin on Tuesday, issued the command after it had been approved by the Politburo. Soviet officials believed the airplane was on a spying mission over Sakhalin Island.

“He was just executing orders,” Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said at a news conference, playing down Kornukov’s role. “He was given orders, (and) he carried them out.”

Kornukov was commander of air defenses on Sakhalin, which lies just north of Japan and was the site of a top-secret Soviet defense installation.

On Sept. 1, 1983, Soviet pilots spotted a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 that had strayed off course on a route from Alaska to Seoul.

Separate investigations by Russian and international aviation officials concluded in 1993 that Soviet officials had confused the airliner with an American RC-135 reconnaissance plane that had been in the region earlier.

After the pilot fired warning shots that failed to change the airliner’s course, Kornukov ordered him to shoot down the plane, Alexander Drobyshevsky, a Russian Air Force spokesman, confirmed in a telephone interview Friday.

In a TV interview Thursday night, Kornukov acknowledged having some “unpleasant feelings” about the incident, but insisted the decision was the right one.

“You see, sometimes in front-line operations, battalions were sacrificed to save armies,” Kornukov said. “In this particular situation, I am absolutely sure even now that (the airliner’s intrusion) was planned and with very definite intentions.”

Kornukov, 55, succeeds Gen. Pyotr Deinekin, who had reached the retirement age of 60.