The appearance over the capital of Karelia at the end of September 1977 of a mysterious luminous object was the impetus for the launch of the secret state program "Grid" in the former USSR, which began to study the UFO phenomenon
“The decision to launch a large-scale state program to study unidentified flying objects was approved by the leader of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev,” said Oleg Pruss, a well-known Ukrainian UFO researcher, member of the Zond Research Center. - Anatoly Aleksandrov, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, addressed the country's leader with a proposal to seriously deal with UFOs (by the way, he comes from the regional center of Tarashch, Kiev region. - Auth.). And the impetus for this was a mysterious event that happened 31 years ago and went down in history under the name "Petrozavodsk miracle". At night something luminous appeared over the capital of Karelia, from which light rain “spilled” on the city. Its rays burned holes in the windows of many houses.
A huge star flashed in the sky, sending sheaves of light to earth
In September 1977, almost all the central newspapers reported about the strange phenomenon that took place in Petrozavodsk. Here is what Izvestia, for example, published: “Residents of Petrozavodsk witnessed an unusual natural phenomenon. On September 20, at about four o'clock in the morning, a huge star suddenly flashed in the dark sky, impulsively sending sheaves of light to the earth. She slowly moved towards Petrozavodsk and, taking the form of a jellyfish, hung over it. She began to shower the city with a multitude of the finest ray streams that gave the impression of pouring rain."
- That night from the Plesetsk cosmodrome (located about 400 kilometers from Petrozavodsk. - Author) they launched a rocket with the Kosmos-955 satellite, - says Oleg Pruss. - Therefore, a version appeared that the "miracle" were the light effects that arose due to the space launch. However, this is hardly the case. After all, the staff of the famous Pulkovo Observatory located in that region said: they had never seen anything like it before. This is very important evidence, since the scientists of the observatory have repeatedly observed optical phenomena that occur when satellites are launched from the cosmodrome. By the way, I served for 18 years at the secret Kapustin Yar training ground in the Astrakhan region, where they tested missiles for the army (Oleg Pruss finished his service with the rank of colonel. - Author). I know firsthand what extravaganza takes place in the sky when rockets are launched - a very impressive sight. However, over Petrozavodsk it was completely different.
Investigation into this mysterious case revealed that on September 20, unusual objects were observed in many places in northeastern Europe. For example, residents of the Finnish capital Helsinki saw a glowing ball flying over the city. A few hours before the appearance of the fiery "jellyfish" over Petrozavodsk, the pilots of the plane following the flight "Kiev - Leningrad" noticed that two luminous blobs were flying after them. Quite curious are the testimonies of one officer who was driving in a company car with a driver and with his son along the Leningrad-Petrozavodsk highway on the night of September 20. In the forest (about 30-40 meters from the highway) they saw a fantastic picture: a "cloud" emitting white light seemed to be strung on tall spruce trees. Hence, the object was not solid. This confirms the version that UFO is a form of plasma unknown to mankind.
“In the morning, many residents of Petrozavodsk found small holes in the windows of their apartments,” continues Oleg Pruss. - Immediately there was an assumption: such a trace could have been left by light rain. Several windows were sent for examination. The results were amazing: the glass was pierced by laser beams. In the USSR then there was only one laser capable of piercing glass from a transcendental height. But this installation was very large and weighed many tons. An entire floor was allocated for its placement in the building of one of the institutes of Tomsk! The laser that "fired" from a mysterious object over Petrozavodsk was much smaller and lighter. Who created it? The desire to understand this was probably one of the arguments for launching the research program "Grid"which was supposed to study "anomalous aerospace objects" (in official documents, this was the wording used. - Author). By the way, in the USA a similar program started working a quarter of a century earlier - in 1952. The reason was the appearance of a whole group of UFOs over the White House in Washington.
It is interesting that in those days the top leadership of the USSR knew about such objects. At least this is confirmed by Doctor of Technical Sciences Valery Burdakov, who worked in the team of the general designer of the world's first space rocket, Sergei Korolev. Burdakov was fond of studying anomalous phenomena, was engaged in new principles of motion - he designed a "flying saucer" on electromagnetic thrust. His immediate superior did not like this - he threatened Valery Pavlovich with dismissal if the scientist did not stop doing "nonsense". I had to look for protection from Sergei Pavlovich, and he told Burdakov that earlier he had reported "upward" about unidentified objects.
By the way, a year before Yuri Gagarin's flight into space, Korolev equipped an expedition to Siberia - to the place where the Tunguska meteorite fell. It was attended by the future cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, who said that Sergei Pavlovich clearly formulated the task: to find a UFO wreck. After a week of searching, Korolev contacted the expedition by radio. The conversation was short. The general designer asked: "Found it?" Hearing no in response, he did not say another word.
The goal of the "Grid" program (since 1980 it was called "Galaxy", and since 1985 - "Horizon") was to understand what is the nature of UFOs. The project had two components: military (aimed at ensuring the security of defense facilities and army personnel) and purely research (it was in charge of the USSR Academy of Sciences). Among others, the hypothesis was considered that envoys of extraterrestrial civilizations arrive on UFOs. In 1979, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR took an unprecedented step by sending a directive to all military units obliging them to immediately report the appearance of unidentified objects. The document even provided a list of points to pay attention to. For example, the shape, color, size, speed of movement … The army, in fact, was placed in the mode of observing UFOs until 1990, when the program was closed. To the surprise of scientists, there were a lot of reports from the troops about flying saucers. Especially a lot of such information came from the aviation units. However, for 87 percent of these facts, experts have found natural explanations: scientific experiments in the ionosphere, rare natural atmospheric phenomena, launches of meteorological balloons and rockets.
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- One of the mysterious facts that the scientists of the "Grid" program had to investigate was an incident that threatened to turn into the beginning of the third world war, - says Oleg Porfirevich. - According to declassified data, it happened on October 4, 1981 at the location of the 50th division of the strategic missile forces of the Carpathian military district. A luminous object appeared over the place of its deployment. Following this, the automatic control system for launching missiles with nuclear warheads spontaneously worked. Can you imagine what the officers on duty at the consoles experienced? Fortunately, everything went well, since the UFO was unable or unwilling to reproduce the code of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, confirming the order to launch the missiles.
By the way, in the Khmelnytsky region, in one of the divisions of the strategic missile forces, on October 5, 1983, there was a curious incident associated with mysterious luminous objects that looked like an airship. It had to happen that just at the moment they appeared in the night sky, a control banner lit up on the control panel, signaling a malfunction in one of the systems. The commission to investigate this incident found out: in a few hundred kilometers at the training ground of Belarus, military pilots were training to drop lighting bombs, which were dropped by parachute from a height of 1000 meters, due to which a vast territory was illuminated for 5-7 minutes. They were seen from a distance of more than 300 kilometers by the missilemen. Scientists attributed this to a rare atmospheric phenomenon of super-refraction.
“UFOs have been seen by many cosmonauts,” continues Oleg Pruss. - Some of them allegedly heard the voices of aliens. One of the most impressive cases occurred in 1985 with the crew of the Salyut-7 station Leonid Kizim, Oleg Atkov, Vladimir Solovyov, and an expedition that came to them for a short time, consisting of Svetlana Savitskaya, Igor Volk and Vladimir Dzhanibekov. It was the 155th day of the prime crew flight, when the cosmonauts noticed an orange cloud on the way of the station. While we were discussing with the Mission Control Center that it might be, Salyut-7 swam into the cloud. According to Vladimir Dzhanibekov, the station was surrounded by an orange glow. It was not possible to find out its nature.
Have you ever seen a UFO?
- Yes. It was in September 2006 during a vacation in the Crimea in the village of Morskoye. At about nine o'clock in the evening, my wife and I went for a walk along the embankment. Suddenly we see something glowing above the hill, similar to the moon. But the real moon was then over the sea … UFOs were observed for about two and a half hours. I took high quality pictures. Then various versions were put forward in the press. Skeptics argued that the mysterious objects were lighting bombs. But the military deny that it was their work. And an illumination bomb cannot hang in the sky for more than two hours.