Boris Pavlovich Bugaev (9 July 1923 – 13 January 2007) was a Soviet military pilot and politician.
Biography
Bugaev was born in the village of Mankivka in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic into a family of teachers. From 1941 to 1942 he was a cadet on aircraft training squadrons. He spent World War II years from 1942 to 1943 as a pilot instructor and then as an operational pilot.[1]
After the war Bugaev left the Soviet Air Forces and worked in civil aviation. He began to be involved in politics around the same time, and joined the Communist Party in 1946. As a pilot for Aeroflot, he undertook several pioneering flights to explore new routes, including to India, Burma and Indonesia.[1]
Bugaev was a trusted pilot of Leonid Brezhnev for many years, which helped Bugaev throughout his career. On 9 February 1961 he flew an Ilyushin Il-18 carrying Brezhnev and the Soviet delegation to Guinea. The plane was attacked by a hijacked French Armée de l'Air jet above the