UFOs in Russia

The most famous UFO sighting in Russian history occurred during the reign of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. On 15 August 1663, between 10 am and 12 noon, a great noise resounded over Lake Robozero (now in Vologda Region), about thirty miles south-west of Belozersk. The event was recorded by the chroniclers of the St Cyril of Belozersk Monastery.

From the north, out of the clear sky appeared a huge flaming sphere no less than forty meters in diameter. From its fore part emitted two “flame” beams, about forty meters ahead of it, from its sides poured bluish smoke. This huge ball of fire, its height of a modern fifteen-storey building, hovered over the Lake Robozero.

The phenomenon was observed by a multitude of people. It was the day of Assumption and worshippers from all of the nearby villages gathered for mass at the parish church situated on the lake shore. The great noise occurred just as the thanksgiving singing began. Terrified by the noise, the people emerged from the church to the vestibule, but upon seeing the frightful sight they went back into the church and “prayed to the Lord and the Virgin Mary with tears and weeping,” whereupon the great flame and the two smaller ones vanished.

Soon afterwards, the “fiery flame” again appeared over the lake somewhat to the west. Its appearance was just as unexpected as the first time and it had dimmed. A little later the same body, became even brighter and more terrifying, reappeared five hundred metres to the west, and then, moving westward dimmed and disappeared.

In spring 1892, there were reports all over the Russian Empire of strange oval objects floating in the sky. In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, similar crafts were seen in Siberia and Manchuria. A year later, the same phenomenon was observed over Cherbourg in France and Tunis in North Africa.

In 1912, workers in the Nevskaya Zastava district of St Petersburg observed a “shining metal apparatus,” which slowly moved across the sky for around twenty minutes, before disappearing from view. The following year, there were mass reports of strange airships in the night-time skies from towns as far afield as Kiev, Izmail, Kazan and Perm.

In 1927, locals witnessed the explosion of a cigar-shaped UFO near the town of Karpinsk in the Urals. The following year, in November 1928, a cylindrical craft emitting flames fell into Lake Vedlozero near the village of Shuknavolok in Karelia. The craft struck the ice of the frozen lake and sank into the water. For a while, the object could be seen about seventy centimeters from the surface. A year later, the object mysteriously vanished.

Witnesses on the shore reported seeing a strange creature with thin arms and legs, which immediately dived back into the water upon being seen. The area also experienced a series of anomalous events. In 1932, a dense black cloud descended on the village and left a gel-like substance on the ground, which the peasants collected in bottles and used as a healing substance. To this day, interference affects television sets in Shuknavolok, but not in the surrounding area. In the 1980s, a Mi-8 military helicopter arrived with divers to try and locate the object, but were unsuccessful.

In June 1941, a UFO crashed into the island of Zelyony, which lies to the south of Rostov-on-Don. The wreckage was removed at night in trucks and the island was cordoned off by NKVD troops (the craft was believed to be a German spy plane). The pieces of the object were taken to Rostov and then to Kapustin Yar, where they later disappeared. In the 1980s, rare and abnormal chemical elements were found on the island.

In summer 1947, a UFO allegedly made a crash landing in the Krasnoarmeisk district of Kokshetau region in northern Kazakhstan. This event was witnessed by a shepherd called A. R. Bodnya. The crew of four humanoids made telepathic contact with Bodnya and claimed to be from the binary star system of Alpha Centauri. After repairing their craft, the visitors flew away, leaving behind a small fragment which the shepherd buried in the ground.

In 1955, the Soviet Ministry of Defence established a top-secret group (committee) for studying UFOs at Kapustin Yar. A special UFO archive was opened at Krasny Kut in Saratov Region (in an underground bunker in the special zone of ??Beryozovka 2). The archive was opened as a direct result of the appearance of several UFOs over Krasny Kut and Kapustin Yar in 1954 and the disappearance of the fighters sent to intercept them.

In 1957, in parallel to the creation of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, a special laboratory for the exploration of space and the research of paranormal phenomena was opened in Novosibirsk. That same year, the fragment of a UFO in the form of a blunt cone was examined by leading members of the Academy of Sciences and confirmed to be of extraterrestrial origin.

In August 1958, wreckage of a UFO was found in the area between Kandalaksha and Afrikanda on the Kola Peninsula and sent for analysis to Moscow and Novosibirsk. According to Alexander Semyonov, president of the Association for the Ecology of the Unknown, the pieces of wreckage resembled the structure of living cells, while their chemical composition had a propensity to mutate.

One night in 1974, a glowing, spherical object was observed flying between the towns of Donetsk and Horlivka in the eastern Ukraine. The UFO exploded in the area north of Donetsk, illuminating the surrounding countryside for a distance of several miles. The local residents soon began finding pieces of wreckage, which were similar to those discovered on the River Vashka in Komi.

On 24 August 1978, a UFO allegedly landed near Khabarovsk in the Far East. The landing site was said to be heavily burnt and was quickly occupied by the military, who collected soil samples and closed all public access to the area. The following year, there were reports of a shoot-out between the special forces (spetsnaz) of the KGB and aliens on the island of Barsa-Kelmes in the Aral Sea. A detachment of ten men and three officers commanded by Major N. allegedly shot several humanoids. The name “Barsa-Kelmes” is Kazakh for “land of no return” and the island has a reputation for paranormal phenomena, including UFO visits, strange temporal variations and disappearing fishing expeditions.

On the evening of 16 September 1989, a battle between seven UFOs was fought in the sky over the port of Zaostrovka on the River Kama just west of Perm. Six silvery disks attacked and fired a beam of light into a seventh, darker coloured craft, which reportedly crashed into a military training ground located a hundred miles to the north of Perm. The aerial combat was witnessed by dozens of people, who reported that all the electricity went off in the port during the event.

A group of four soldiers – the head of the military training ground, his aide, a lieutenant and a private – waited for the swamp to freeze over and examined the site of the crash in November 1989. All four men were hospitalised after suffering radiation sickness; the area was declared a restricted zone and sealed off. Later, when a civil pilot called Alexander Armanenko flew an Antonov An-2 over the site, the instruments in his cockpit were affected by strong electromagnetic radiation and he was subsequently reprimanded for endangering the lives of his passengers.