From the nearly five-year period of my work as Ambassador to Brazzaville in the early 1990s, which was rich in events both in our country and in the Republic of the Congo (ROK), I particularly remember one episode.

One evening (it was late 1993), the military attache, Colonel A. N. Buryak, ran into my office. He was very excited. "Comrade Ambassador," he reported. -We have a state of emergency: Lieutenant Colonel N.* from the group of our military advisers did not return from a training flight on the MIG-21. Communication with the plane is lost. My guess is that the pilot may have made an emergency landing in the jungle. I don't have any other information yet."

That's all I needed, I thought. In the morning, armed clashes between pro-presidential forces and supporters of the opposition bloc resumed in the city. As soon as the evacuation of our families to Moscow was over, the wives and children of Russian embassy employees had to be taken out through Brazzaville from neighboring Zaire, where riots once again broke out...

He reported the incident to Moscow. Together with the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Kazakhstan, we took measures to search for the missing pilot and aircraft, and requests were sent to neighboring countries. The Embassy organized a crisis headquarters. At its first meeting, all the information about the incident was summarized. A situation was not excluded when a high-speed MIG could well be outside the limited Congolese territory and hit hard - to-reach areas of neighboring countries-Gabon or the Central African Republic (CAR). The worst option was considered landing in Zaire, which at that time had strained relations with the Congo.

I spent the next morning anxiously waiting for news. Multiple overflights of the areas where the plane was supposed to land failed to produce any results.

Finding traces of the MiG, even if the pilot managed to land it in a dense wooded area, is a difficult task, especially since the plane was not equipped with an emergency beacon, which (as I later learned) our military was silent about.

The second day ended. We did not lose hope that the pilot was alive. Becoming more and more aware that the pilot's life depends on our efficiency, we urgently began to look for additional opportunities.

They found out that planes leased by an American private company are conducting topographical surveys in neighboring Gabon, and a squadron of French light civil aircraft is located in Ivory Coast. Having received the "go-ahead" from Moscow, I immediately went to the French and American ambassadors. We must give it to them

* Unfortunately, I don't remember the pilot's first and last name due to the age limit. I hope this post will help us find out the hero's name.

due respect-they responded to my appeal with understanding and promptly. The very next day, two of their light planes flew to Brazzaville.

The entire third day was spent in intensive search, already together with the arrived replenishment. Overflights continued on the fourth day. Again without success. French and American pilots diplomatically began to hint at the futility of further efforts.

Doubts about the success of the search were exacerbated by a sense of inevitability of trouble. At the same time, there was also a growing sense of anticipation (this was especially noticeable in the behavior of the head of the group of military advisers and the military attache) of Moscow's reaction, which was not difficult to predict.

The denouement came on the fifth day. "Found it! The lieutenant Colonel is found!" The military attache burst into my office with a shout of joy. He said that the missing pilot turned up on his own, calling Brazzaville from a remote village a few hundred kilometers from the Congolese capital. This was just reported from the Ministry of Defense of the Congo, and a group of rescuers has already taken off in a helicopter for the pilot.

I'm relieved. I immediately sent an urgent telegram to Moscow, offering to thank the French and Americans through our Foreign Ministry for their assistance in finding the Russian pilot.

A few days later, on a Sunday, the head of a group of military advisers invited me to the sauna in the military camp to "celebrate the event". And he added that Lieutenant Colonel N. will be there, who will tell about his own adventures.

At the appointed hour, taking with me, according to our tradition, a bottle of Stolichnaya, I stood on the threshold of the sauna, where I was met by a general belted with a towel, who introduced me to the hero of the occasion. I was confronted by a youngish-looking man with an athletic build, who somehow immediately endeared himself to me. Numerous, barely healed deep marks on the body from cuts and, apparently, from insect bites caught my eye. From the lieutenant colonel's meager answers to questions at the table and in the steam room, the following picture emerged of what had happened.

"After losing contact with the airfield," he said, " after making a few laps, I realized that I was completely off course. On the remains of fuel, it is hopeless to continue his search, so he urgently began to look for a suitable place to land. Seeing a small river under him, in the hope that he would be able to save the plane, he decided to sit on the water.

From a hard impact on the water, he lost consciousness. When I came to, I saw scattered around the fragments of the plane that had fallen apart. In the absence of an emergency beacon, I did not count on an ambulance of rescuers and decided to move along the river, judging that there were more chances to come across people near it.

We had to make our way through dense thickets, clearing the way with a metal wreckage of the plane. The cuts on his hands and feet from sharp branches and thorns were wrapped up with pieces torn from his clothes. Despite his thirst, he avoided drinking water from the river, collecting rainwater. He ate what he could get, some fruits and berries. I didn't think about the consequences. At night, he practically did not sleep a wink, cautiously listening to the unusual sounds of the rainforest and fending off insects.

During the day, I managed to make little progress: the impact received during an emergency landing and fatigue affected. I was almost not hungry: it was harder to bear the stifling and humid tropical heat. I found no signs of human habitation in the following days. He continued on, keeping close to the river as before.

On the fourth, or perhaps the fifth (I lost count) day of wandering, almost exhausted, I saw for the first time a man heading for the nearby huts. With the last of his strength, he rushed forward, shouting something. At first he shied away as if from a ghost: I must have been a frightening sight to see a white man running out of the forest, covered with stubble, rags and bruises, and shouting something in an incomprehensible language. Finally, when I had exhausted my meager vocabulary of French, among which I often repeated the words "Russian" and "telephone," the Congolese seemed to understand what I was trying to do. He probably took me to the headman's house on the edge of the village, where there was the only telephone in the whole area. They put me through to Brazzaville, explaining, apparently, that some strange Russian had turned up... On the same day, a helicopter came to pick me up."

Such, in brief, is the extraordinary story of the missing pilot, as I remember it. Although, I assume that because of his modesty, many details were left out of the picture.

Before the departure of the French and American pilots, I invited all the search participants to the embassy residence. The atmosphere was upbeat and friendly. Of course, the center of attention was Lieutenant Colonel N. He was literally attacked with questions.

The Frenchman was particularly pressing. Everyone was interested in the details of how he, alone, without food, water and improvised means, managed to survive after so many days of wandering through the tropical jungle. Throughout the meeting, the foreign pilots were genuinely surprised and delighted by the " extraordinary feat of a phenomenal Russian pilot." One of them, a young Frenchman, already saying goodbye on the threshold of the residence, did not stop exclaiming: "C'est pas possible !"How is this possible?").

All this happened shortly before the end of my business trip to the Republic of the Congo. How did the fate of this courageous man develop in the future? According to the fragmentary information that has come down to me (I can't guarantee their complete reliability), he did not stay in the Congo for long, but soon returned to Moscow, where a "debriefing"took place. Upon reaching the "maximum" age for his military rank, he retired.

Turning over the faces and events of almost twenty years ago, I would like to pay tribute to the dedication of Russian military specialists who served with honor in tropical Africa during a difficult period for both our country and the Republic of the Congo.

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