Ukraine - part 1 - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

There was a general reorganisation of aircraft seating before leaving Leningrad for Kiev. The British Ambassador, Sir Rodric Braithwaite, and Lady Braithwaite hitched a lift in the BAe 125 with the Air Attaché, while the Doctor and I transferred to the support Hercules. In addition we had picked up a couple of Soviet interpreters who flew in the Hercules. They could have been KGB, I suppose, but at least they were friendly and helpful. It was obvious that the Soviets did not want us to overfly certain areas and so there had to be lengthy negotiations about the precise routes to be flown. However, the weather was excellent, the flights uneventful, and the entire detachment arrived at Borispol in mid afternoon.

Borispol is situated about 50 kms east of Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, and is both the civil international airport for Kiev and a Soviet Air Force base. The Ukrainians are very proud of their country and it quickly became obvious that they had no great love for their near neighbours, the Russians. It was made quite clear to us as soon as we arrived, that the locals preferred us to refer to the Ukrainian Air Force rather than the Soviet Air Force. They even provided their own interpreters who seemed to spend as much time with the Russian interpreters as they did with us.

Kiev itself was the third largest city in the Soviet Union, after Moscow and Leningrad, and the Ukraine was the third largest republic in the union, after Russia and Kazakhstan. The Ukraine was one of the four original republics that formed the USSR after the 1917 revolution. It has more than 50 million people and stretches over 1300km from east to west and over 800 km from north to south.

Although everyone could speak Russian, Ukrainian was given equal prominence in all public places and in newspapers, radio and TV. Ukrainian has a strange mixture of Cyrillic and English letters and it sounded familiar yet almost totally incomprehensible.