Soviets Held 12 GIs in 1950s, Yeltsin Says

WASHINGTON —  The Soviet Union shot down nine U.S. planes in the early 1950s and held 12 American survivors in prisons or psychiatric clinics, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin said in a letter hand-delivered to U.S. senators Friday.

The fate of the Americans is still under investigation, Yeltsin said.

In an acknowledgment that leaders of the former Soviet Union had lied to the United States throughout the Cold War, Yeltsin also said in a letter to the Senate Select Committee on POW and MIA Affairs that hundreds of U.S. servicemen were kept prisoner in the Soviet Union during and after World War II.

The letter was hand-delivered Friday to committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Vice Chairman Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) by Gen. Dmitri Volkoganov, a senior military adviser to Yeltsin.

Other than the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’ spy plane in 1960, neither U.S. nor Soviet officials had formally acknowledged that U.S. planes had been downed over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Defense Department officials refused to discuss the matter Friday night, saying they were studying the Yeltsin letter.

Kerry and Smith called Yeltsin’s letter a bold and unprecedented break with past deceptions. “They are admitting the sins of the past,” Kerry said, adding that the Russians are actively investigating whether some Americans might have survived up to the present.