Mysterious story about border overflying (Video)
- 6.07.2012, 10:52
Channel One (Russia) showed a report about the latest scandal in Belarus.
Belarus is discussing a mysterious story about an unidentified flying object. Numerous eyewitnesses say they saw a small plane dropping teddy bears. The military, however, flatly deny this information branding all photos and videos a hoax, Channel One reports.
The Local, a Swedish news portal, reports a plane with Swedish nationals intruded into Belarus's airspace on Wednesday morning, released a thousand of teddy bears with leaflets and returned to an aerodrome in Lithuania.
Total PR agency claims it stands behind the operation. The agency's website published photos of teddy bears and leaflets fixed to them: “Free speech now”, “We support the Belarusian struggle for free speech”, “Teddy bears demand to respect human rights in Belarus”. Per Cromwell explains teddy bears were an allusion on a toy picket organized by Belarusian activists, who later were taken into custody for 10 days.
Studio Total director says a part of teddy bears was released near the village of Ivyanets and the remaining part was dropped over Minsk. However, the organizers cannot show video or photo to prove they stuffed animals were dropped over the Belarusian capital.
Eyewitnesses in Ivyanets report about the plane. “It made two circles and released black packets. It was a kind of a sporting aircraft,” Maria Hrabanava from Ivyanets says.
The Ministry of Defence of Belarus denies the very fact of intrusion into the country's airspace.
“The Ministry of Defence of Belarus is checking the information published by a number of Internet sources about an alleged unsanctioned flight of a foreign aircraft over Belarus. There are no facts that would prove border crossing in the air. Having examined the photo and video materials, experts identified poor-quality photoshop and video editing, which attests to a clearly provocative nature of the information,” the Belarusian Ministry of Defence says.
The Lithuanian defence body confirms the fact of air intrusion into Belarus, but cannot say if it has links to the teddy bears assault.
Specialists suppose it's possible that radars cannot detect a small plane flying nap-of-the-earth.
The CIS countries defend their air border collectively, but the incident took place in the area of responsibility of Belarusian air defence forces. The incident resembles a story that happened 25 years ago, when 18-year-old Mathias Rust landed on Red Square in Moscow. No one knows how he managed to do this, but several Soviet military officials were fired.