RUSSIA: Posters

On his well-guarded daily stroll in Moscow last week, U.S. Ambassador George F.

Kennan was stopped short by big posters announcing Russia’s annual Red Air Force Day celebrations. The posters showed So viet warplanes attacking U.S. planes, and apparently they were drawn from real life.

One depicted the shooting down of a U.S.

Navy Privateer in the Baltic in 1950; an other, the Neptune bomber shot down off the coast of Korea last year ; the third was of Red fighters forcing down a U.S. cargo plane in Hungary last winter. The Krem lin has never directly admitted the shooting down of the planes.

Ambassador Kennan wrote an angry protest, adding some stiff comments about Russia’s current Hate America propaganda campaign, and fired it off to the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Later the same day, a Soviet messenger appeared at the U.S.

Embassy with invitations for the air force show. Kennan bade him take the invitations back to the Kremlin. For the sake of solidarity with the U.S., the British am bassador and the French charge d’affaires boycotted the show too. But being practical men. all three sent their air attaches to the show.