2 expelled U.S. envoys visited Russian military plant

MOSCOW: Trip seen as factor in Russian action

The two American military attachés who were expelled from Russia early this month, days ahead of the Victory Day martial parade on Red Square, had made an uninvited visit to a military aviation factory in Siberia that Russia regards as strategic, several American officials said.

The unannounced visit occurred in late March at the Novosibirsk Aviation Production Association in the Name of V.P. Chkalov, a plant that manufactures Sukhoi-34 fighter-bombers, known as Fullbacks by NATO designation. The two officers involved, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, appeared at the factory's gates and were subsequently questioned by the surprised local authorities, three American officials said.

The Russian government later asked for them to leave the country, a request the United States honored.

Both the United States and Russia have provided very little information about the reasons behind the expulsions. But the more detailed account of the officers' travels and the Russian reaction appeared to undercut in part the assertion last week by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the attachés had fallen victim to simple tit-for-tat retaliation for two Russian diplomats expelled from the United States.

It appeared instead, according to officials who asked not to be named because they did not have permission to discuss the case publicly, that the officers erred in judgment by seeking access to a military plant without making advance arrangements.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has declined to comment about the expulsions since they were made public last week. The FSB, the domestic successor to the KGB, said it would review questions submitted in writing, but refused to answer them upon receipt. The American officials, however, said that the officers had complied with all of the rules for American diplomatic travel in Russia.

Under those rules, American diplomats must give the Russian government three days' notice before traveling, a practice that the American government requires of Russian diplomats in the United States. But as a longstanding practice and matter of protocol, diplomats who hope to enter sensitive sites almost always make advance arrangements and receive invitations from their hosts, which appeared not to have been done in this case.

The officials said the attachés' visit was especially odd because Novosibirsk, the third-largest city in Russia, was a formally closed city during Soviet times, and its defense plants and the local authorities retain a security-minded mentality. The aviation plant in Novosibirsk reportedly made a small number of Su-34 last year, but had increased production in this year. The timing of the expulsions coincided with Russia's busiest political week of the year, and as the Kremlin was on the international stage.

Former President Vladimir Putin yielded office to his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, last week and then was confirmed as prime minister the next day. A day later, the first military parade with tanks and nuclear missiles since 1990 was held in Red Square. But American officials rejected the idea that the expulsions had larger significance in the relations between the two governments, or were a retaliation.

"It is our sense," one of the officials said, "that what happened to these two guys was about them." 

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