Spy sub commander ‘in labour camp’

Press, 9 February 1982, Page 17

Spy sub commander ‘in labour camp’

From

CHRIS MOSEY,

in Stockholm

The Soviet submarine commander who ran aground in Sweden last year is now serving time in a labour camp, according to three separate reliable reports reaching Stockholm. They say that LieutenantCommander Pyotr Gushin has been given a "light sentence." which means his family is allowed to visit him regularly, and that he gets privileges denied other prisoners.

There is some discrepancy concerning the length of the sentence. One report says he has been given three years, the others two years. The Soviet Union was deeply embarrassed by the prolonged worldwide publicity when Gushin’s nucleararmed Whisky-class submarine went on the rocks last October, apparently while spying on Sweden’s main southern naval base at Karlskrona.

A Swedish journalist. Jan Nicklasson, of the domestic news agency F.L.T., says that "a well-placed source with military connections” had told him over the telephone from Moscow that Gushin had been given three years in a camp near his home in Riga, capital of the Baltic

republic of Latvia. Nicklasson. whose wife recently emigrated from the Soviet Union to join him in Stockholm, adds: "The man I have spoken to has access to document's that are off limits to most people in Russia." His source told him: “It was unthinkable that under the circumstances the submarine captain would go without punishment. “If the captain had been acquitted, it would have been an indirect admission that he had been acting on orders from above. By sentencing him. it is hoped to show that Gushin acted on his own responsibility, which was what the Soviet authorities maintained throughout. "Even if it was accepted by the court martial that th'e official Soviet reason for the submarine’s presence in Swedish waters was correct — ‘that the submarine’s navigational equipment was faulty’ — Gushin still had to be sentenced under Soviet military law for embarking on ‘an undertaking on his own initiative’.” Aleks Milits, who runs a radio station for Estonian exiles in Stockholm, says he had heard from contacts inside Latvia that Gushin was

in the camp near Riga but that his sentence was two years. “It is a light sentence. His family will be allowed to visit him. He will probably live better than other prisoners. Somebody has to be punished for the’ incident and he is the scapegoat. But when he comes out he will almost certainly get a desk job back in the" Navy." Another report which reached a diplomatic source in Stockholm, via Riga, says that Gushin had been given two years in the Latvian

camp after a hearing behind closed doors at his base in Kaliningrad. , Nicklasson. Milits. and my third source are agreed that the Soviet authorities probably deliberately leaked news of the sentence to Sweden to demonstrate that the submarine incident had not gone unpunished. When the Norwegian diplomat. Eivinn Berg, visited Moscow late last year, the

Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister. Igor Zjemskov, pointed out that an official commission of inquiry had been set up to investigate the grounding. Reports have also reached diplomatic sources in Stockholm that two Soviet admirals have been sacked as a result of the submarine affair. The first to go was Admiral Georgij Jegorov. deputy commander for the

Soviet fleet, who has been demoted to chief of a paramilitary organisation responsible for youth sports activities. The second was Admiral Vladimir Tjernavin. who was forced to resign in December. The submarine incident

sent the Soviet Union's stock with its Scandinavian neighbours plummeting. The submarine spent 10 days stranded on the rocks off Karlskrona. carefully guarded by the Swedish Navy while being filmed and photographed by the world's press. The Swedes finally towed it free after an " official apology from the Soviet Union “regretted” the incident. The Soviet Union has agreed to pay the cost of the salvaging operation, said, to be about $1 million. A secret Swedish report on the affair prepared by Supreme Commander Lennart Ljung is understood to slate quite clearly that the 25-year-old submarine, armed wnh nuclear weapons, was on a spying mission against Karlskrona. Copyright —

London Observer Service.