Thank you *very* much for the link!
I've never seen such a detailed report on the -225 before.
Has anyone got any idea why its crew includes a navigator and radio operator? I would have thought that their roles would have died out in the 1970's whilst this aeroplane was built in the late 80's albeit related to a late 1970's design.
Could very much be an apocryphal tale, but I had heard that one of the more superfluous crewmembers onboard (perhaps in this instance, the radio operator) was a political commissar, to prevent pilots from defecting with what was then the pride of the Soviet Air Force.