For many years, many facts of Armenian terrorism have been deliberately glossed over in Russia, most notably the prevented and "not fully implemented" terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, analysis of the "unrealised" or incompletely realised plans of Armenian terrorists allows us to take a new look at the crimes committed by them.

Such terrorist act committed on the eve of the collapse of USSR in 1991, and mainly the motives of the terrorist have become known only recently.

This act of terrorism, which would be one of the bloodiest in human history, if carried out, took place on board of IL-86 making a regular flight from Moscow to Novosibirsk. There were 345 passengers (20 of them had infants) on board the airbus. A total of 383 people were on board, including the terrorist who had brought improvised explosive devices into the cabin.

At that time, the terrorist was neutralised and the plane was grounded.  Soon the USSR collapsed, which was one reason why the story had a short-lived resonance. However, after the terrorist attack, when the trial was being prepared, it emerged that the terrorist had been influenced by Armenian nationalists who wanted to draw attention to Nagorno-Karabakh with a large-scale terrorist attack.

Recently the publication Argumenti i fakti (Arguments&Facts) described the terrorist act in detail in the article "We Fall, we Burn". How to land after explosions with 365 passengers on board".

https://aif.ru/society/history/padaem_gorim_kak_prizemlitsya_posle_vzryvov_s_365_passazhirami_na_bortu

The present article, based on the recollections of co-pilot Yuriy Sytnyka, does not give the whole picture of the past. Interesting details are also given in the much earlier article "Fight of "local importance" - on the ground and in the air" http://www.sovsibir.ru/news/100391 , namely that a notebook with diary entries, in which he described in detail the system of preparation for the attack, was found in the terrorist's belongings.

The diary showed that for a year and a half the terrorist had been thoroughly studying the airport security system and boarding rules. At the same time the terrorist's task was to eliminate as many passengers as possible and so he preferred the most cargo carrying liner on the flight Moscow - Novosibirsk.

At least two years before the attack, the terrorists began to prepare for it. After all, they needed more time to find a suicide bomber and to "brainwash" him. That is, "air war" with numerous victims, the Armenian terrorists began to plan at least since 1989. And all the time while the monstrous act of terrorism was being prepared the Armenian nationalists shouted to the world how "miserable and long-suffering" they were.

Instead of an ethnic Armenian, the terrorist was a Russian, a 26-year-old native of Novokuznetsk, Yevgeny Volodin. This is precisely the "specificity" of Armenian terrorism, because in the case of a planned terrorist attack on a civilian airliner, if it "succeeded", the terrorist had no chance of surviving.

Therefore, they were not suited for the role of suicide bombers (Armenian terrorists love to kill, but are not prepared to die themselves), and they found a Russian as doomed to destruction, who had been seduced by his delusional nationalist ideas and driven to irreversible mental shifts.

In total, the terrorist had 6 bottles of saltpeter in his bag, which he carried on board the plane, bound in pairs with duct tape. A total of 3 homemade incendiary bombs. Volodin planned to place a bomb in each of the 3 cabins of the IL-86, so that there would have been no chance of saving the passengers and crew.

Luckily, the aisles of the plane were occupied most of the time: they were delivering dinner, or drinks, or collecting utensils. The terrorist had to confine himself to a single hearth. He went to the toilet compartment closer to the nose of the aircraft, after a couple of minutes, then came out and threw explosive devices - one towards the pilots' cabin, one towards the passenger cabin in the aisle. The explosion was heard, and a fire broke out. Fortunately, through the efforts of the crew commander and the flight attendants, the fire was extinguished. The aircraft made an emergency descent and made an emergency landing at Sverdlovskaya airport.

A second happy coincidence of circumstances was that among the passengers was an officer of one of the operational units of the KGB of the USSR, Vladimir Popov, returning to Novosibirsk from a business trip, who did not get lost, used his professional skills and helped to neutralize the criminal locked in the toilet and take him alive, for which he was awarded the USSR Order of Personal Courage.

An investigation and trial of the terrorist had already taken place during the "turbulent era" of the USSR's collapse. The terrorist himself had been declared mentally incompetent and sent for compulsory treatment. Nevertheless, Volodin's information prevented a series of similar attacks in St Petersburg, Kaliningrad and other cities.

The Armenian terrorists' unsuccessful and thwarted attacks on civilian airliners reconstruct the picture of a large-scale "air terrorist war" they had planned.

 In 1991 the USSR was living out its last days, still formally in existence, but the country would finally disintegrate following the Viscule agreement of 8 December 1991. However, while the USSR existed the Armenian terrorists planned terrorist attacks with many hundreds of civilian casualties, with a view to declaring to the world that the 'Armenians of Artsakh' cannot live within Azerbaijan and to ultimatum, with further terrorist attacks and casualties, that the USSR Supreme Soviet would hand Karabakh over to Armenia. 

Kavkazplus