The Refugee Helpers

Very early on the morning of April 1, 1978, a camouflaged sports plane took off from the airport at Immola in southeastern Finland. It flew north across a desolate snow-covered landscape, with the Soviet border visible a few miles off to its right. A brief refueling stop at the little village of Ruo-kolahti on the shore of Lake Karinkijarvi and the plane was off again. When out of view from the village, it turned sharply eastward, dropped to tree-top level, and picked up speed. It was across the Soviet border in a matter of minutes, past the heavily fortified border zone and a string of radar stations. Undetected, it continued eastward for another six miles, and landed nine miles northwest of the Soviet town Kexholm, on a small lake. The man at the controls was a Swede, Karl-Goran Wickenberg. He was flying to Kexholm, risking an international incident, to meet a woman.

In 1974 Valentin Agapov had defected to Sweden from the Soviet Union. In the four intervening years his attempts to get his family out of the USSR had attracted nationwide attention in Sweden. The Soviet government, however, had rejected the Swedish government’s timid appeals. All legal means exhausted, Agapov contacted Wickenberg.

LF

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Lennart Frantzell

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Very early on the morning of April 1, 1978, a camouflaged sports plane took off from the airport at Immola in southeastern Finland. It flew north across a desolate snow-covered landscape, with the Soviet border visible a few miles off to its right. A brief refueling stop at the little village of Ruo-kolahti on the shore of Lake Karinkijarvi and the plane was off again. When out of view from the village, it turned sharply eastward, dropped to tree-top level, and picked up speed. It was across the Soviet border in a matter of minutes, past the heavily fortified border zone and a string of radar stations. Undetected, it continued eastward for another six miles, and landed nine miles northwest of the Soviet town Kexholm, on a small lake. The man at the controls was a Swede, Karl-Goran Wickenberg. He was flying to Kexholm, risking an international incident, to meet a woman.

In 1974 Valentin Agapov had defected to Sweden from the Soviet Union. In the four intervening years his attempts to get his family out of the USSR had attracted nationwide attention in Sweden. The Soviet government, however, had rejected the Swedish government’s timid appeals. All legal means exhausted, Agapov contacted Wickenberg.