Vlad air scare

Ordered ‘Sochi’ jet shot down

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a passenger plane to be shot down in 2014 after officials said a man on board had a bomb and was demanding it land near the Winter Olympic site in Sochi, the strongman said in a documentary released Sunday.

In the two-hour Russian-aired film “Putin,” the president tells an interviewer that he got a phone call from security officers at the Sochi Games on Feb. 7, 2014, shortly before the start of the opening ceremony.

“I was told a plane en route from Ukraine to Is- tanbul was seized, captors demand landing in Sochi,” Putin says in the documentary, according to Reuters.

The pilots of a Turkish Pegasus Airlines Boeing 737-800 carrying 110 passengers from Ukraine to Istanbul reported that a man had a bomb and that the plane had changed course to Sochi, where more than 40,000 were gathered at the stadium for the opening ceremony.

Putin says he consulted with his security officers and was told the emergency plan for that situation called for the plane to be shot down.

“I told them, ‘Act according to the plan,’ ” he recalls, adding he arrived in Sochi with Olympic officials a short time later.

Then Putin took another call.

Officials informed him that the passenger was just drunk — it was a false alarm — and the plane would continue on.