Soviet Union Declassified UFO Encounters Revealed

Soviet Union Declassified UFO Encounters Revealed

“We have confirmed that a number of these unidentified objects are indeed, solid.”

So said the leader of the Pentagon's newest investigation into UFOs, which you probably know as UAPs today.

The long culture of ridicule is officially over, UFOs are real, they are here, and nobody has a clue who's building them. But while UFOs were part of American culture for nearly a century now, the world would be shocked at the disturbing similarities between events happening in the US and a world away, behind the impenetrable iron curtain.

The secrecy is over, and what has come from declassified sources both within the former

Soviet government and the CIA itself is nothing short of terrifying.

Soviet sightings of UFO run as long as sightings in America, but most Soviet citizens had no clue what was going on in their own backyards.

Thanks to a strict culture of secrecy and censorship, it wasn't until Glasnost started to open Soviet society up that the lid on the Soviet UFO secret finally came unscrewed.

Some news outlets purposefully dramatized relatively ordinary events as they exercises newly found freedoms and pushed to see just how far they could take things.

However, there were plenty of very real UFO related events happening- and some were high profile enough to catch the attention of CIA spies behind the iron curtain.

On January 29th, 1986 at 7:55 pm, a quote- amazing event- occurred on Hill 611 near the village of Dalnegorsk in Primorskiy Kray.

This small mining town is of no note, but that night it would become the most important place in the entire Soviet Union.

That evening, multiple villagers observed a reddish sphere flying into the town from the southeast.

The object flew while making no noise, and appeared to be a nearly perfect sphere of rust red.

It got close enough for people to observe that the outer skin of this strange craft was without blemish, and had no obvious control surfaces nor means of propulsion.

For a while the object hovered up and down over the village, moving at a relatively slow pace.

As it ascended it would glow brighter, before dimming as it descended. Suddenly, the object appeared to be in distress. All witnesses interviewed later by Soviet authorities recalled how the object “jerked” or “jumped” suddenly, then fell like a rock straight down onto Hill 611.

Witnesses heard a dull thump as it impacted, and then began to burn intensely for an hour. Valeri Dvuzhilni, head of the Far Eastern Committee for Anomalous Phenomena, arrived at the site two days after the crash.

He noticed that despite everything being covered in deep snow, the site of the crash was completely devoid of it, allowing him to observe splintered silica rocks- which could only have occurred from extreme temperatures.

The rocks were also “smoky” looking, as if they had been exposed to intense heat.

However, Dr. Dvuzhilni also found physical evidence of the craft.

All over the site and imbedded in the rocks themselves he discovered silvery pieces of metal.

Some were fragments, but a large amount had formed into droplets, almost as if they had been 'sprayed' over the area.

This detail would become significant after the fall of the Iron Curtain when western UFOlogists would compare notes with their eastern counterparts- American witnesses had very often reported seeing flying orbs which seemed to “spray” metal while showing signs of some kind of distress.

At the edge of the crash site was a tree stump that had been severely burned and emitted a strange chemical smell.

The physical remains were examined at the Omsk branch of the Academy of Sciences, who made a shocking discovery.

Some of the fragments had formed into what appeared to be small nets, and when these were put under examination it was discovered that they were made up of torn and very thin threads 17 micrometers in width.

Each thread consisted of even thinner fibers tied up in plaits, and intertwined with the fibers were thin, solid gold wires.

The technology to replicate this type of delicate nano-construction wouldn't appear on earth for decades- at least not in human hands anyways.

The fragments which had formed into iron balls were also put under a battery of tests.

Each ball consisted of iron with various levels of aluminum, manganese, nickle, chromium, tungsten, and cobalt.

This seemed to rule out a natural creation, and the object just being a very peculiar meteorite.

Rather, it mostly confirmed that the object was built from heterogeneous alloys.

When the balls were melted in a vaccum chamber, they reacted in various ways- on one base they would melt and spread out as expected, but on another they formed into smaller balls with convex glass-like structures.

But melting the remains revealed yet another mystery- gold, silver, and nickle would disappear from the balls and be replaced with molybdenum- despite not being present in the sanitized test chamber before testing commenced.

The metallic remains would confuse soviet scientists, as they only produced more questions than answers.

About the only thing that they were able to identify was ashes discovered on the site, belonging to a biological being.

Perhaps the ashes belonged to an unfortunate animal caught under the crash. Or perhaps they belonged to the operator of the mysterious UFO.

Sadly, the intense heat made any attempt at identification impossible. Unable to tease out details from the remains, the investigation turned to the object itself before it crashed.

The trajectory as reported by eyewitnesses happens to coincide with a flight path taken by rockets launched by China's Xichang Cosmodrone.

However, investigators weren't able to verify if any launches had taken place in January from the complex, and the Chinese were not forthcoming with any answers, likely looking to keep their space program as secret as possible.

However, the investigation revealed something very startling- Soviet citizens had not been the first to spot this mysterious object, the Chinese had already observed it over their own territory.

Just days prior to the crash, witnesses close to the Xichang Cosmodrome reported a similar red sphere on January 25th.

According to witnesses, the object appeared to simply hover, almost as if observing the cosmodrome directly. After a half hour, it disappeared.

The Chinese sighting wasn't the only clue that this object had traveled great distances though- there was physical evidence too.

Examination of the soil at the crash site revealed small pieces of light gray colored soil- but only in the area where the object was presumed to have made direct contact before

exploding and mostly disintegrating. Put under spectroscopic analysis, the light gray soil was matched with soil from another area in Russia- thousands of miles away.

The soil matched tuffs from the area of Yaroslaval, northeast of Moscow, containing characteristic elements found there and not in the Dalnegorsk area.

Whatever had crashed there, it was obvious that somebody came looking for it though.

Eight days after the crash on Hill 611, at 8:30 pm on February 8th 1986, eyewitnesses once more reported strange objects in the sky.

This time, two yellowish spheres flew into the town from the north.

The spheres seemed to be looking for something and made their way directly to the crash site.

Once there, they circled the crash site four times, then turned to the north and flew back the way they came.

Was it a search and rescue effort by whatever had sent the original sphere there?

Or simply something wanting to make sure no identifiable remains had been left behind?

To this day, nobody knows, but the reports of flying spheres exactly mirror similar reports from all the way across the ocean in the US.

And the following year, whoever had visited the sleeping mining town returned in force.

November 28th, 1987- 11:24 pm.

Reports of flying spheres flood a local military base.

Terrified villagers report seeing as many as 32 flying objects, which spread out over twelve different nearby villages.

Alarmed Soviet military personnel quickly made their way to the nearest villages and observed the strange flying lights for themselves.

Before the night was over, hundreds of civilians and military personnel would bear witness to one of the largest mass UFO sightings in history.

The objects appeared specifically interested in Dalnegorsk, and thirteen of them broke away and flew directly to the mining village.

Once there, three of them hovered stationary over the village, while five seemed to illuminate the nearby mountain and crash site.

They appeared to move with no discernible propulsion and made no noise, hovering at varying altitudes between 150 and 800 meters.

As the lights flew over homes, people reported disturbances of their electrical equipment.

Ministry of Internal Affairs officers would later testify that they observed multiple objects at 11:30 pm.

One object flew towards them from the direction of the Gorely settlement, leaving a fiery quote- flame- behind it.

At the head of the flame was an opaque sphere, and within that sphere was another, smaller red sphere.

At a local quarry, eyewitnesses observed a large cylindrical object the size of a five story building flying directly towards them.

The object was around 200 or 300 meters, with the front lit up like burning metal.

Terrified that the object was going to crash into them, many of them fled for shelter.

The quarry manager observed the object moving at an altitude of about 300 meters.

Large and cigar-shaped, this description would also precisely fit that given by American and western European witnesses of very similar objects.

The object appeared to fly without the aid of wings and no discernible propulsion, making no noise as it flew over the quarry.

Nearby, a kindergarten teacher observed a dark, metallic-looking elongated object she estimated at 10 to 12 meters long.

This object appeared to be in front of a bright, blinding sphere of light that hovered noiselessly at the height of a nine story building.

The object hovered over a school and shot a half-meter wide violet-bluish ray down at the ground in front of the school.

The teacher remarked that objects caught in the ray did not create shadows as would be expected if they were being illuminated from above.

The object then departed the school and moved to a nearby mountain.

According to her, the object appeared to be searching for something, emitting a reddish, projector-like light onto the mountain.

Finally, the object simply departed by flying over the mountain and out of sight.

The crash and subsequent UFO invasion of Dalnegorsk would remain secret for years, but once it made its way to the west the similarities between this event and multiple similar events in the US would convince researchers that Americans and Soviets were both observing the same, mysterious phenomenon.

Cigar-shaped objects and mysterious balls of light are a commonly reported type of UFO in the US for decades, and multiple eyewitneses have reported what they thought were malfunctioning air or space craft of some kind which bobbed up and down as reported by the Dalnegorsk witnesses while emitting a shower of what appeared to be molten metal.

Curiously, some of the craft described by the Dalgenarsk witnesses bear a strong resemblance to the infamous US Navy tic-tac video, filmed by fighter pilots intercepting an unidentified aircraft over the Pacific ocean.

But this isn't the only parallels between American and Soviet UFO sightings, because while America had Roswell, the Soviets also had their own close encounter with alien beings-and their encounter had more and better witnesses than Roswell.

“It is not a joke, nor a hoax, nor a sign of mental instability, nor an attempt to drum up local tourism by drawing the curious.”- so said the Soviet state press agency TASS, discussing a UFO close encounter in 1989.

According to the offical report, two boys and a girl from a local school were playing in a park on the evening of September 27th.

At approximately 6:30, the children observed something pink shining in the sky, followed by a ball of deep red colors they estimated at 9 meters in diameter.

A small crowed gathered as the ball seemed to land, and a hatch opened in the lower part of the ball.

From within the ball, three aliens with three eyes each exited, standing nearly 3 meters tall.

The aliens seemed to have a robot companion with them, which they activated with a touch.

As the crowd watched in awe, the aliens seemed to communicate with each other, ignoring the onlookers- until a young boy screamed in terror.

Suddenly, one of the aliens locked his three eyes on the child and caused him to become temporarily paralyzed.

The three aliens then reentered their vehicle but quickly reemerged, with one carrying what the crowd thought was a gun of some kind.

The alien aimed the tube at a 16 year old boy who suddenly vanished, only to reappear after the aliens reentered their craft to depart.

The story was met with both ridicule and serious investigation, as is typical of UFO reports.

To this day, accounts vary- a Soviet evening news correspondent dispatched to the town with a film crew failed to find any eyewitnesses to the aliens except for the children.

However, they did speak with the local police chief, who confirmed one important detail of the account- he too had seen a large, silently flying craft shortly before the alleged landing took place.

Soil analysis discovered high concentrations of radioactive isotopes in the landing area, but this proved inconclusive as after the Chernobyl disaster it was not uncommon to discover small pockets of highly concentrated radioactive isotopes. However, what's curious is that if it was a hoax, the children just happened to pick a landing spot with said high concentrations of isotopes- which would require analysis in a lab to even identify.

Even more curious, when the children were separated into different rooms by investigators, they all drew nearly the exact same craft from memory.

The craft was also said to leave behind a mysterious X-shaped sign in the sky as it took off- exactly mirroring UFO encounters reported in the United States by the defunct American magazine Saga in 1976.

Given the strict censorship of the Soviet Union in the 1970s, it's a nigh impossibility the children or police chief would have had access to said magazine.

But why were there no other eyewitnesses to the alien beings themselves?

One need only look at the culture of ridicule surrounding UFOs to understand why a bunch of adults in repressive communist Soviet Union would not want to speak up about such an extraordinarily weird event.

As highlighted in the United States' own recent UAP investigation, a culture of ridicule has quote- hampered our efforts to collect good data, as pilots are self-censoring for fear of ridicule and it affecting their future careers.

The US Air Force and Navy took that recommendation so seriously that they immediately instituted new guidelines for reporting UFOs, ending the infamous century long culture of ridicule that's silenced witnesses even amongst America's most elite military units.

Soviet pilots however were long reporting UFOs, and on occasion- even being killed by them.

While on a routine flight over the city of Borisov, two Soviet fighters spotted a large flying disk near the city.

The disk seemed to have five beams of light emanating from it: two were directed upwards into the sky and three were pointed down at the ground.

Ground control instructed the patrol to fly in for a closer look, an act that would doom one of the pilots.

On approach, the disk suddenly flew up to match speed and level with the lead Soviet fighter.

Suddenly, it aimed one of its beams directly at the plane, filling the cockpit with blinding light.

The co pilot was at the controls and flight logs record him reporting a bright ray of light entering the cockpit and projecting a spot about 20 centimeters in diameter.

This ray of light swept across the cockpit and directly through the pilot's body, with both pilot and copilot reporting extreme heat.

The plane broke off and returned to base immediately.

Shortly afterwards, the copilot's health immediately deteriorated with frequent fainting spells that forced him into retirement.

The aircraft commander however died within a few months of the incident, with the cause of death listed as cancer.

This wouldn't be the only report of a UFO shooting beams of light though.

A declassified CIA report notes an encounter with hundreds of eyewitnesses, including a Major V Loginov, outside the city of Omsk.

In his own official report, the Major states that he and other eyewitnesses spotted a strange object in the sky which radar could not pick up.

The object passed overhead at an altitude of several kilometers, revealing a shining sphere one and a half times as large as the current full moon.

The object was casting four very bright beams of light, sometimes parallel to the ground and sometimes at an angle.

The UFO hovered over a civilian airport for five minutes and even descended a bit.

Suddenly, the beams of light disappeared and a whirling plume trail appeared around the shining sphere.

With an extraordinary burst of speed, the object took off to the east.

Pilots from a second nearby airport reported seeing the object but being unable to pick it up on their radars.

Immediately relaying the sighting up the chain of command, within five minutes other military personnel at Altay Kray reported having the same object under visual observation.

Given the time and distance, the object appeared to have traveled 600 kilometers at a speed of about 7,000 kilometers an hour.

UFO sightings were so frequent in the Soviet Union, that the declassified CIA report also notes a meeting of 100 Soviet scientists from various disciplines all meeting together to discuss the dramatic uptick in UFO sightings in the 1970s and 1980s.

It's now known that some UFO reports inside the Soviet Union were highly secretive US air and space craft.

Other sightings were misattributed to everything from secret rocket launches to failed rockets or simply spent rocket stages. However, just like multiple American UFO investigations would reveal that still left a significant number- about 5%- of sightings that simply could not be explained. And most disturbing of all were the reports from Soviet nuclear facilities of unidentified craft that perfectly mirror similar reports from the United States in the same time period.

In one high profile encounter, a UFO nearly started World War III.

Colonel Boris Solokov spoke with western UFO investigators after the fall of the Soviet Union, reporting that on the night of October 4th 1982, there was a breach of airspace over a nuclear weapons site in Usovoin, Ukraine.

Solokov, who was working at the Kremlin at the time, described receiving alarmed reports from the facility, who's operators informed him their launch panels had all suddenly activated all on their own- something which should have been impossible.

For four hours, the entire facility watched a hovering UFO as it loitered directly overhead.

While it hovered, the control panels which could launch the nuclear weapons stored there suddenly came to life- something which could only have happened with the input of the proper launch codes.

The incident sparked a ten year investigation by the Soviets into the UFO phenomenon, which they kept under wraps until the end of the Cold War.

This event closely mirrors a similar incident at US nuclear facility in Minot Air Force

Base, when security personnel observed a UFO which hovered over the silos holding America's nuclear-tipped Minuteman missiles.

According to witnesses, the missiles briefly became active and went into a launch state, despite having received no such authorization or command from their control centers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, UFO reports around Soviet nuclear facilities remain very difficult to verify- but the Soviet Union had a plethora of otherwordly sightings which only grew in number as the Cold War dragged on.

At 4:05 AM on September 20th 1977, a group of dockworkers in Petrozavodsk witnessed a blinding light on the horizon from the direction of Lake Onega.

The light approached the slumbering city before shifting into the shape of a glimmering jellyfish, whom according to eyewitnesses began to hover over the city and shoot thin beams of light down into the city.

The dockworkers were terrified, concerned that their nation was under attack- this being the height of the Cold War, paranoia over a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the US was running high.

After twelve minutes of shooting beams of light down to the city, the UFO transformed once more into a bright semicircle and shot back off in the direction it came.

Suddenly it veered upwards and punched through the clouds, leaving a burning red hole where it had passed that quickly dissipated.

Later that morning, more witnesses would come forward, and the list would grow from the initial dockworkers to police officers, sailors, an ambulance crew, and a reporter for the state news agency.

Under pressure to prevent all-out alarm, the reporter would post a story three days later calling the phenomenon “strange” and “natural”.

The object left no physical evidence behind save for a photograph allegedly taken of the object by one of the witnesses.

However, given the veil of secrecy in the Soviet Union at the time, the photograph has been impossible to verify.

However, neighboring local governments became so alarmed by the incident that they demanded an answer from the Kremlin leadership.

When they were unable to provide a satisfactory response, the event was taken to the Academy of Sciences, where the Soviet Union's most prolific scientific minds worked.

They couldn't come up with an explanation for the sighting, but after doing some research concluded that the UFO phenomenon was very real, and required more dedicated investigation.

The Academy's secret investigation started a year later, and ran all the way until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Unofficially known as 'the Network', this government-backed investigation ran for thirteen years and had one goal: scientifically understand the UFO phenomenon.

The Network enjoyed the support of 20 different organizations, staffed by specialists in physics, chemistry, optics, and spectroscopy.

The initial investigation was kept top secret for two reasons: either it would verify the existence of extraterrestrial life, or the findings could have some form of defense value.

The Network also had to coordinate its investigation with the defense ministry, a task which created some conflict.

Where scientists working for the Network found a mystery needing scientific investigation, the defense ministry simply saw a threat or potential enemy.

Thus the two sides had vastly differing approaches to their UFO investigations.

Even so, the two sides worked together to gather UFO data.

The Network gathered reports from scientific institutes and Soviet citizens, while the Defense Ministry gathered them from within the Soviet military.

Perhaps spurred on by repeated violations of their air space by very advanced American aircraft- first the U2 and then the Blackbird spy aircraft- Soviet soldiers were under strict orders to report all mysterious phenomenon, especially if it interfered with their equipment.

This was in stark contrast to the US, where a culture of ridicule had sprung up both in the military and civilian sectors- despite multiple ongoing secret investigations by the Department of Defense.

The Network would go on to investigate 3,000 UFO reports, debunking all but 300 of them which they had no explanation for.

These results would mirror both the US Air Force's Project Blue Book effort and the latest investigation into UAPs by the Department of Defense.

But this debunking work was critical for the understanding of what was a real UFO and what wasn't, even when the Soviet Union's secrecy made such work difficult- the Petrozavodsk event for instance, would be solved by an American engineer working for NASA, who put together pieces missed by the Soviets.

Using NASA's satellite tracking center, he discovered that the Soviets had launched an object from their top-secret cosmodrome in nearby Plesetsk at 3:58 AM, just minutes before the sighting.

However, that doesn't explain the motion witnessed and attested to by many observers.

Rockets can only go up, even if they do so at a very diagonal angle.

They certainly can't hover, and they can't lose or gain altitude at will.

Could the UFO then been a response to the top secret launch minutes before?

Or was it a case of bad eyewitnesses being very mistaken about what they saw?

We might never know the truth, but what we can be sure of is that something was recreating the exact same UFO phenomenon over the Soviet Union that was taking place over American skies.