During our 10-day visit to Russia in March 1993, the famous ufologist George Knapp and I met with several Russian ufologists who had been working in obscurity for many years. Moscow physicist Nikolai Kapranov, whom we met during his business trip to the United States, helped us organize these meetings.
Retired Colonel Boris Sokolov has become a true storehouse of valuable UFO information for us in Moscow. According to him, in 1980, the Russian military units received an amazing order from the Ministry of Defense to report all UFO sightings and, if possible, attach photographs to messages. These materials went to Colonel Sokolov. “I received at least 40 letters from pilots who encountered UFOs,” he said. “They were ordered to chase objects and shoot them down. However, those who dared to chase UFOs lost control and fell, This happened three times, and in one incident the pilot was killed. After that, according to Sokolov, the pilots received another order - when meeting with a UFO, change course and move away from contact.
According to the colonel, the Russian military was interested in UFOs for a number of reasons and, above all, in the hope of using "extraterrestrial" achievements in improving military equipment.
Boris Sokolov especially remembered the date of October 5, 1983. He was ordered to fly immediately to one of the launch bases for ICBMs in Ukraine. Such a rush was caused by the report of the base commander to the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Army about the appearance of an unidentified object near the base on October 4, 1983. During the observation of the UFO from 16.00 to 20.00 on the main control panel, light bulbs were lit and, in an incomprehensible way, the launch programs were turned on. Fortunately, not a single rocket took off. But six years later, Sovetskoe Voennoye Obozreniye magazine announced the urgent need for regular exchange of UFO information with the West, because the appearance of UFOs could provoke a nuclear conflict between the superpowers.
Sokolov told us about cases of shooting at UFOs with hand weapons.
When the military guards opened fire on these objects, they left without visible consequences.
In the 1980s, Sokolov received thousands of UFO reports. Many of them, of course, were wrong. But from a body of credible data, the colonel selected 400 of the most intriguing cases. To our surprise, we received permission to purchase this archive. It is now being translated into English.
Promotional video:
Sokolov said that throughout his service, he had never received material evidence of the existence of a UFO. True, once he was sent a certain fragment, which was sent for analysis to 4 research institutes. They all agreed that the debris is composed of elements not found on Earth in this combination.
Our next interlocutor was one of the main specialists in the Russian version of the "strategic defense initiative" Rimiliy Avramenko. To our question about the reality of the UFO phenomenon, he answered decisively: "For me and my colleagues there is no doubt: of course, this phenomenon is real!"
Further, Avramenko said that information was exchanged between the aliens and earthlings. This is evidenced by the uniformity of the Russian and American anti-satellite defense systems - both here and there are used "alien weapons" ("plasma beams"). According to Avramenko, a very large UFO hovered over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Despite firing at him with the most powerful guns, he didn't even budge!
According to Sokolov and Avramenko, the study of UFOs by the Russian military continues to this day. This was confirmed by our meeting with a representative of the Russian Ministry of Defense. We have no right to publish his name, but we can name the ufological program in which He participates: "Thread-3".
One of the materials shown to us concerns UFO sightings by Russian cosmonauts. Unlike American astronauts, who disowned any involvement in such events, Russian celestials have mentioned UFOs since the very first space flight. According to the documents, Yuri Gagarin also spoke about the reality of UFOs and their incredible speeds. He added that if he was allowed, he could tell more about what he saw in orbit. The material shown to us also testifies to American space observations of UFOs, including lunar reports from the Apollo crews.
We managed to talk with another person who has never given interviews to Western journalists. It was Valery Burdakov, who worked in the 1950s at the Moscow Aviation Institute, where Soviet space programs were born. Burdakov's interest in UFOs was embodied in a series of lectures on this topic. They attracted the attention of the "father" of Soviet cosmonautics Sergei Korolyov, who, however, did not try to convince the lecturer, but rather trusted him himself.
As 60-year-old Valery Burdakov now recalls, in 1948, Stalin invited Korolev on the occasion of UFOs. In a special room on the table were dozens of publications and other materials on UFOs, including reports from the secret services. Of particular interest was Stalin's information about the UFO crash near Roswell in July 1948. After studying all the materials, Korolev told Stalin that UFOs are a real phenomenon. "These objects do not threaten our country," he added, "because they are not made in the United States or on Earth in general." Stalin allegedly replied that Korolev's opinion was shared by other scientists.
In our interview with Burdakov, it turned out that the founder of Soviet ufology, Felix Siegel, had lectured in front of the KGB. Burdakov himself also talked about UFOs at the Institute of Atomic Energy and in other "secret institutions".
“We know that the US Air Force has huge UFO archives,” said Valery Burdakov, “as well as the naval forces. All these materials are classified, and the people who requested them were told that they had been destroyed."
Before Siegel, Yuri Fomin was a prominent figure in Russian ufology. His interest in UFOs dates back to the early 50s, when he worked in one of the Moscow institutes related to the automation of industrial processes. In his lectures to the military, he, to his surprise, met among them people who participated in American UFO events. However, his lecturing activity did not at all mean “ufological glasnost” in the USSR, for he was publicly condemned in the newspaper Pravda. As a result, he and Siegel were forbidden to lecture in open classrooms, although they continued to speak in government and military institutions.
In the USSR Academy of Sciences, separate groups of scientists have been studying the UFO problem since the 70s. Over time, at least 10 academic institutions were involved in this research. In Russia, of course, there were voices and skeptics. The most famous of these is Yuliy Platov of the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism and Radio Wave Propagation (IZMIRAN), who writes off 90% of all UFO reports as trigger effects. However, he does not deny in principle the possibility of visiting the Earth from other planets.
Most American scientists believe that the UFO phenomenon does not exist, since it is not a subject of research. And since there is nothing to explore, there is no research. The Russians do not seem to know this syllogism, which is why they have been working in the field of UFOs for a quarter of a century. Rem Varlamov of the Moscow Technical University has surveyed many UFO landing sites throughout Russia, including a dozen in the vicinity of Moscow. He studied chemical and physical changes in soil samples, discovered the acceleration of quartz clocks in the planting zones, recorded soil sterilization in them. Among his other discoveries are "angel hair" left by UFOs. Dr. Varlamov told us about attempts to get in contact with "extraterrestrial intelligence". Some of them seem to have been crowned with success.
Varlamov's results were confirmed by biologist Yuri Simakov, who also visited many landing sites. Interesting are his experiments with flies, which he placed in the zones of the UFO touching the ground. The flies began to rage and fly there with a loud buzzing. The most intriguing discovery by Simakov was the discovery of glassy balls in soil samples, which have not yet been identified by anyone. The scientist himself considers them to be the result of the transmutation of oxygen into sodium under the influence of UFO radiation. “Or it’s micro-containers for transferring the embryos of life from one planet to another,” he says. Dr. Simakov gave us some samples for analysis in the USA.
At two UFO landing sites in Siberia, this biologist found microscopic worms in the ground. It would seem that nothing special, except that such organisms are found only in Mexico!
The military, whose names we promised to keep secret, showed us films depicting the procedure for training Russian soldiers to develop their "farsightedness." As a result, they acquired the ability to fix military targets without the use of technical means. The number of successful results reached 70%.
From our trip to Moscow, we learned the conviction that large-scale and serious studies of UFOs are being conducted in Russia. We, of course, failed to reveal all Russian UFO secrets. But what we learned also made a great impression on us. In addition, we received an invitation to visit Moscow again to further study the state of ufology in Russia. Thus, this renewed country now provides new opportunities for Russian-American UFO cooperation. We managed to sign an agreement on the creation of a joint research institute with the task of ensuring a regular exchange of ufological information between our countries. The UFO phenomenon is too serious a problem for our powers to study in isolation from each other.
George Knapp and I are planning to create a series of documentary videos about UFOs, in which Russian UFO achievements will take their rightful place.
Based on materials from the magazine "MUFON UFO Journal" No. 306 Gennady Lisov