We are in room #20, on the 2nd floor of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow. The picture shows the remains of the CIA U2 spy plane, shot down on May 1, 1960 over Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinenburg) by a S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile strike. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, far from swallowing the cyanide capsule he had been given and destroying the plane, preferred to parachute out. The missiles also shot down a Mig-19 that had been chasing the U2, so Powers was initially mistaken for a Soviet pilot, but the misunderstanding was cleared up. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and then exchanged in 1962 for William Fischer, a KGB spy who had remained as silent as a grave in interrogations.
Convinced that Powers was dead, the White House, the CIA, NASA and the entire Yankee machine covered themselves in ridicule in this case, claiming that the U2 was a weather reconnaissance plane (which was also believed by the pilot's family, who did not know that he had been recruited by the CIA) and that its pilot had had "oxygen problems" over Turkey. NASA even went so far as to stage a media event at Edwards Air Force Base, showing a "similar" U2 with fictitious NASA markings and serial numbers. Unfortunately, Powers was alive and well and Moscow was able to expose the Yankee lies.
We are in the 21st century. Nowadays, Powers are artificial and there is no need to equip them with cyanide, a bundle of rubles and women’s jewelry (which Captain Powers had on him). The remains of the MQ9-Reaper combat and spy drone intercepted (or shot down?) by the Russian air force over the Black Sea (over Ukrainian, Russian, or international territorial waters? - we don't know) have their place in the room n° 20 of the Tsentral'nyy muzey Vooruzhennykh Sil. And Putin, repeating Khrushchev's generous gesture, can always send a piece or the Reaper to Uncle Joe.
sinann, Singapore, 2015
