An incredible story about the escape of a Lithuanian sailor from the USSR. Life as an adventure movie

Kudirka heard them say, “Those two will never go to sea again.”

“I heard those words and exploded inside,” Kudirka later wrote. “Border police would book them on flights, then take them away at the last minute without explaining why. They will always be at risk of losing their jobs. And why? The moment they grabbed those magazines, their lives merged with mine, and mine merged with meaninglessness.

We were all victims. We were trapped in a floating prison. Out of nowhere, the idea of ​​jumping on an American ship popped into my head.”

Kudirka decided to jump and ask for political asylum on board “Vigilant”. He had a wife and two children in Lithuania, but he hoped that in a couple of years he would be able to bring them to the United States as well.

Kudirk succeeded. Both to jump down and to request political asylum.

But then organizational and diplomatic hell began for several hours. What to do with a defector? Both sides thought about it intensively.

But first, a real ruckus happened on board. It so happened that after getting on the American ship, Kudirka ran into the duty commander of the Russian ship. It turns out that a small group of Russian sailors from the Kudirka ship had been invited on a tour of the American cutter.

Kudirka fled, and it seemed that everything would end well – the American sailors covered her, cheered her up and finally hid her in a small galley so that the Soviet delegation would not find her.

But the fun was over for the American and Russian leadership. The American side, after intensive communication with all kinds of leadership, including the admiral, received an opinion: Kudirka is a deserter and as such should be returned to the Russians. When Soviet Lithuania sent an official request to the United States to extradite Kudirk, his fate was sealed.