Bizarre and Sensational UFO and Alien Conspiracies of the Old Soviet Union

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the subsequent end of the Cold War, a barrage of UFO accounts previously unknown in the West entered into the public domain. Indeed, while some limited accounts had made their way to the West during the Cold War, as the nineties unfolded, it became clear that UFO and alien encounters had been as rife in the Soviet Union as they were in the rest of the world. Indeed, the Soviet regime appeared to have just as much interest in UFOs as the United States, although the Soviets were even more guarded about what they knew. The Soviet authorities, for example, regularly told their own citizens that UFO sightings were actually secret weapon tests of the “evil West and United States!”

Indeed, as we will explore later, while many of the UFO encounters to come out of the Soviet Union are genuine (in that they are unexplained real events) there is reason to believe that some of them have been intentionally planted into the public arena – essentially to see how far false information would travel around the American and Western media platforms.

It is also worth noting how the Soviet authorities were seemingly quick to downplay and discredit believers in extraterrestrial life, sometimes brutally so. In the years before the Russian Revolution, for example, there appeared to be quite the appetite for such contemplations among the Russian population, which showed itself in the widespread interest in Cosmism. Under the iron grip of Lenin, though, and even more so under Stalin, such thoughts suddenly became (quite literally) unthinkable. Many believers and philosophers of Cosmism were carted off to the gulags, often on charges of spying for the West. Indeed, we might question just how many such people were rounded up during Stalin’s political purges of the 1930s, for example. We can also only question just how many sightings during this time went completely unreported, as well as how many of those were documented in the records of researchers sent to the labor camps in the Siberian regions.

Just one such person was Henrik Ludvig, who was imprisoned on charges (that were almost certainly false) of spying for the Vatican. He remained incarcerated for decades, but his work survived and eventually entered the wider public domain. Ludvig had visited the Vatican decades earlier as part of his architecture studies. However, while there, and for reasons admittedly unknown, he was seemingly given access to the ultra-secret Vatican archives. And, according to his writings, what he learned in these archives is interesting, to say the least. He stated – decades before famed ancient astronaut theorist, Erich Von Daniken, incidentally – that extraterrestrials had visited the Earth many thousands of years ago, and had a direct influence on several ancient civilizations, including the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, and the Mayans.

He also made several other remarkable claims. He offered, for example, that the many pyramids around the planet were the result of this alien intervention, and these structures were “energy machines”. In the decades that followed Ludvig's first proposing this, many other engineers and researchers have arrived at similar conclusions, perhaps the best example being Christopher Dun and his studies of the Great Pyramid of Giza. What’s more, he also suggested that nuclear power and even nuclear weapons were in use during ancient times, with one ancient civilization being completely destroyed following a nuclear strike. His theories are certainly thought-provoking.

Perhaps a good place to start with actual UFO encounters, however, would be with several alleged crashes of UFOs behind the Iron Curtain. Going back to the 1960s, for example, there are several such events. The first seemingly detailed account of a downed UFO in Soviet territory occurred in 1962, when not one but two otherworldly vehicles are said to have crashed in the former communist state. According to local reports, the first of these occurred in the town of Semipalatinsh, with the ruins quickly retrieved by authorities and transferred to a military facility in nearby Zhitkur. A second craft was said to have come down in the largely uninhabited, upper northern regions of Russia. Once more, according to local reports, the wreckage was retrieved by Soviet troops and transported to an alleged secret underground facility somewhere in Moscow.

According to a declassified KGB document, the following year, in 1963, another object crashed in Soviet territory. The report states that hundreds of witnesses attested to seeing a “silver disc” crash into the waters of Lake Balkash before Soviet troops secured the site only hours later. The report then details that the wreckage was taken to a military bunker in Slepnogorsk with a view to reverse engineering it. It is interesting to note that, as well as the KGB document, many former high-ranking Soviet officers spoke openly about this particular incident in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is perhaps an alleged UFO crash in the Topolovka Forest in the summer of 1966, though, that is one of the most interesting. On the evening in question, geologist, Oleg Ivanovich, was leading a team of scientists on a field trip in the region. After freeing one of their horses, which had become stuck in a swampy mud area, the team decided to bed down for the night and continue on in the morning. Several hours later, however, the team was dragged from sleep by the sound of a huge explosion somewhere nearby. As they came to their senses, they realized there were intense flames coming from the nearby woodland, and thick, black smoke was rising into the air. Realizing they were in danger of being consumed by the encroaching fire, the team took refuge in the river until the flames died down by first light.

Although there were still small pockets of fires by morning, it was safe enough for the team to investigate. The first thing they discovered was that their radios no longer worked, nor would their compasses, the needles of which simply spun round and round. They then decided to head into the forest in the direction the explosion had come from. It wasn’t long before they found themselves confronted with a crippled object on the ground that looked like “two washbasins set face to face” with thick, black smoke still coming from it. Through the smoke, they could make out several flashing lights and what looked like an open doorway. Most unsettling of all, though, each could see what looked to be a “tentacle” protruding from the doorway. Although they claimed to have taken several pictures of the wreckage, they also claimed that none of them developed, which could have been due to the film being corrupted due to an increase in radiation.

A short time after their discovery they heard the sound of military helicopters overhead – and what’s more, they appeared to be heading in their direction. The team decided to make their way out of the area, suspecting that the helicopters were looking for the downed craft. When Ivanovich returned to the location the following day, the object was indeed gone, and given the state of disrepair they had discovered it in, the only logical explanation was that the military had recovered the remains. This was backed up by the signs of recent activity on the muddy ground around where the craft had been.

Another leaked KGB document – one that was seemingly smuggled out of the country – details another apparent encounter with a downed UFO that occurred in the state of Sverdlovsky in early 1969 (possibly March of that year). What makes this account truly stand out, however, is apparent photographs and even video footage of the incident. A report of the encounter featured on TNT’s The Secret UFO Files of the KGB television show, and according to their information, an anonymous buyer paid $10,000 for this apparent proof of an otherworldly craft.

Further, according to these leaked files, as well as the downed craft being retrieved by the Soviet authorities, the remains of at least one dead alien occupant were also recovered, with both being transferred to the ultra-secret location, Kasputin Yar. Even more remarkable, video footage of an alleged autopsy of the recovered alien – which, incidentally consists only of a torso and an arm - also exists, although, as we might imagine, many researchers treat this footage with a large pinch of salt. That said, certain details make the encounter and the documentation that comes with it not as easy to dismiss. Part of the footage, for example, features a 1950 ZIS-151 truck carrying the recovered vehicle. This model was decades out of operation by the time the footage surfaced in the 1990s. Essentially, if the footage was hoaxed during this time, it would have been highly difficult, if not impossible, for someone to obtain a fully working authentic model.

At this point, it is worth going back two decades to the years following the end of the Second World War, and claims of a Soviet military pilot – Arkady Ivanovich Apraksin - who had several apparent aerial entanglements with these otherworldly vehicles, not least as it shows that the Soviet authorities were more than aware of these curious craft approximately around the same time as other authorities around the world. We should note, though, that there is considerable debate as to whether Apraksin ever existed, with some researchers suggesting he has intentionally been erased from history by Soviet authorities due to his encounters.

The case comes to us from the files of Timothy Good, whose research into the case I document in the book From Deep Within The Archives Of UFO Insight: Histories Most Bizarre, Outlandish, and Controversial UFO and Alien Encounters. Good received the information on the pilot through Soviet scientist and UFO researcher, Dr. Felix Zigel, who himself was alerted to the case following the research of Voronezh University lecturer, Yuri Fomin.

According to this research, Arkady Ivanovich Apraksin was one of the most decorated pilots in the Soviet Air Force. He was also one of the most naturally gifted, receiving the Red Star award, the Red Banner award, and the Patriotic War First Class award during the Second World War, as well as multiple other recognitions from such operations during the defense of Stalingrad or the capturing of Berlin. It is no understatement to say he was a hero of the Soviet world.

Following the war, Aparksin was involved with test flights of secret and developmental aircraft, and it was during one of these test flights that he had his first encounter with a craft seemingly from another world. On June 16th, 1948, in mid-flight, he witnessed what he described as a “cucumber-shaped” object that was on a direct collision course with his plane. He also described “cones of light” coming from the object and sweeping the air around it. The object was also visible to radar controllers at the Soviet military facility Kapustin Yar. In fact, following the appearance of the object to the control tower at the facility, orders were sent out for the anomalous object to land, a command it ignored. It was following this that Apraksin was given orders to pursue the mystery craft, and if it ignored a second command to land, he was to engage it.

He immediately headed in the object’s direction. However, when he was a little over five miles away from the bizarre craft, one of the cones of light emanating from it fell on his plane. As soon as it did so, it disabled all of the plane’s equipment, forcing him to guide his plane to an emergency landing. As he did so, the object disappeared into the distance. Following the encounter, Apraksin underwent intense questioning in Moscow from high-ranking officials. What’s more, an official statement was prepared on his behalf.

Following this, Apraksin was given orders to take 45 days leave, which he duly did. However, ten days before this leave was due to end, he received orders to report back to duty. He was soon back in the air on test flights, and around a year later during just such a flight at an altitude of approximately 50,000 feet, on May 16th, 1949,  he encountered the same, or similar, cucumber-shaped object once more. Once more, he found his plane encompassed in one of the strange cones of light. This time, however, as well as his equipment malfunctioning, he also lost air pressure. While he did manage to emergency land the plane, the task was much more difficult, and he ended up on the banks of the Volga River, around 50 miles away from his base.

He seemingly blacked out shortly after landing, as the next memory he had was waking up in a military hospital. He was immediately required to make a full statement of the encounter before being ordered to undergo several months of “evaluation”, which was even said to include shock therapy. Eventually, in January 1950, he was declared Group One Disabled by the military medical board, which, essentially, deactivated him from military service. The following year, he applied to be reinstated – a request that was declined.

When the previously mentioned Timothy Good researched the case, he could find no mention of Apraksin in any Soviet book, nor in any book on Soviet history or Soviet aviation. He even contacted the Soviet Central House of Aviation and Space in Moscow requesting information on Arkady Ivanovich Apraksin. They replied, interestingly or not, that they had “no information on the test flight activities of A.I. Apraksin. He is no hero of the Soviet Union!”

Good relied on trusted sources, and he determined that Apraksin had indeed existed, although he had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared in the early 1950s, with no known knowledge of his whereabouts. Eventually, Good managed to track down Yuri Fomin, who offered to Good that he had interviewed the pilot by pure chance when they shared a train carriage sometime in September 1951. Following this initial meeting, Fomin attempted to track down the former pilot for almost two decades but was ultimately unsuccessful. He stated to Good that Apraksin was likely a victim of the “Soviet system” that would simply not allow descent of any kind.

Was Apraksin forced from any kind of public life because of his encounters with UFOs? Was he threatening to speak of his encounters? Might it be possible that rather than being suppressed, he met an even worse fate like many others undoubtedly did in the Soviet Union during the Cold War years? Or might this public disappearance have been orchestrated to allow him to continue working on advanced aircraft in complete secrecy – perhaps even early spacecraft of Soviet design as the space race with the United States intensified? Or could it be possible that he never existed at all, and his exploits with UFOs have been completely fabricated for reasons unknown? If the Soviet authorities intended to muddy the waters surrounding the claims of the ace military pilot and his close encounters with UFOs, then we might argue they have, in this case, succeeded.  

There are also plenty of cases of alien interaction and abduction taking place behind the Iron Curtain. According to an account detailed in the book Greatest UFO Case Files: Scintillating Encounters with ETs and Mysterious Aliens, for example, at some time in May 1978, just such an alien abduction occurred on the shores of Lake Pyrogovskoye. According to the report, the witness – Anatoly – was walking along the shores of the lake when he was suddenly approached by two strange humanoid figures, each wearing suits that appeared to be made from cellophane. They grabbed him – one at each side – and proceeded to take him to a nearby craft on the water’s edge. However, once onboard, rather than conduct any type of harrowing experiments or procedures, these apparent aliens conducted a lecture of sorts about, despite the “noble aims” of communism, that it “caused poverty” among the population.

Then, even more bizarre, the figures instructed him to drink a clear liquid that they offered would cause him to forget the incident. This perhaps leads us to wonder why, if we assume the account to be undoubtedly true for a moment, they would go to the trouble of passing on such information if they were simply going to have him forget the details. We know that he didn’t forget the incident, but the detail of abductees being told to drink a “clear liquid” in order to forget about their respective encounters is a detail that can be found in several other alien abduction encounters on record. Furthermore, when Anatoly did report the incident, he was subjected to psychological examinations and even a lie-detector test, which he passed with no suggestion of any untruths on his part.   

The following year, in September 1979, according to Volume 8, 2002 edition of the RIAP Bulletin, in an article by Valery Kukushkin, another encounter with an apparent otherworldly entity unfolded. At a little after midnight on the night in question, the unnamed witness suddenly awoke in their bed with a distinct feeling that they were in “terrible, mortal danger!” Despite this feeling of danger, the witness remained calm, opening their eyes slowly to adjust them to the darkness and not alert whoever might be there to the fact that he was awake. He scanned the room as best he could, not seeing any sign that anyone was there. Then, he realized that whoever – or whatever – was in the room with him, it was behind him.

Slowly, he began to turn around. However, a moment later, he came to a sudden stop when he caught sight of where his portable television should have been. In its place was a “stone monolith of greenish-gray color”, and in the middle of this monolith was a “semicircular cap consisting of a transparent substance”. As he focused more on this bizarre display, he could see a “dense and viscous” red light behind the monolith. He now remained completely still, beyond perplexed at the events that were unfolding around him. Then, these already strange events turned even stranger.

Suddenly, he sensed some kind of movement coming from between his bed and a chest of drawers nearby. The next thing he knew, something had leaped up onto the bed. This figure ran across his feet and then came to a stop on his torso in a kneeling position. In this stance, the figure was approximately 30 cm tall, but the witness guessed that when standing, the figure would likely be around 60 cm in height. After taking a moment to gather his thoughts, he stared at the creature and realized it was quite literally a “miniature human” being.

Still in a mild state of shock, the witness lay still as the figure leaned forward and placed its hands on the witness’s arms. As soon as contact was made, the witness felt a sudden surge of nausea run through him. At the same time, the witness looked directly at the figure. As soon as he made eye contact, a sudden feeling of calm washed over him. Now, in a more relaxed state, he could see the details of this small creature much more clearly. He noticed, for example, that its head was a lot larger than the rest of its body, as was its eyes, which were slightly elongated. The figure’s skin was also particularly pale, almost white, and it was dressed in some kind of one-piece tight-fitting suit that covered it from its feet to its neck. Then things turned even more surreal.

The creature leaned forward once more and appeared to begin to speak, although the witness recalled the sounds were “low and expressionless” and sounded more like Morse Code. Needless to say, he didn’t understand what the creature, if anything, was trying to say to him. It appeared this was not lost on the small figure, who leaned even closer and then seemed to repeat what it had just said. Once more, though, the witness couldn’t understand anything.

Almost instinctively, the witness started to sit up in the bed. However, before he could fully raise himself onto his elbows, the strange creature scarpered off past his feet and then disappeared into the darkness of the room. It was at this point that the witness noticed the stone monolith-like structure had disappeared, and his portable television was back where it normally was. Although the witness didn’t see the figure again, they did experience several bizarre paranormal happenings in the weeks that followed, making him question if the encounter with the strange being had somehow opened up a certain part of his mind to the supernatural world.

Arguably the most fascinating humanoid encounter to come out of the old Soviet Union took place beneath the ancient waters of Lake Baikal, one of the oldest and deepest lakes on the planet. Close to the border of Mongolia in southeastern Siberia, Lake Baikal is a picture of serenity on the surface, but the icy waters plunge to a depth of around 5000 feet in places. It is also a location that has a long history of strange goings-on, including sightings of strange objects hovering over the water of the ancient lake. There was, though, no stranger encounter than an incident involving a military diving unit in the summer of 1982.

According to leaked documents, courtesy of a former Soviet navy officer, Vladimir Azhazha, several Soviet divers witnessed these objects over the water during routine military training exercises taking place at Lake Baikal. However, it was during a dive of around 150 feet beneath the surface of the water that several of the units experienced the most dramatic encounter of the exercises. As the unit was carrying out its training mission, several 10-foot humanoid entities appeared around it. Each of these humanoids wore a skin-tight one-piece suit and a spherical helmet, although there was no sign of any kind of breathing apparatus. The divers remained where they were and simply watched the group for several minutes. Then, the humanoid figures disappeared into the depths of the water.

They would immediately report the encounter, and a short time later, a second diving unit made up of seven divers was sent back to the lake to explore the depths of the water once more. This time, however, rather than just observe them, the unit was under orders to capture one of them. They descended into the icy waters, and after several minutes, several of these humanoid entities appeared once more. Furthermore, they were heading straight towards the unit, although it was reported they were doing so out of curiosity as opposed to out of aggression. Despite this, as soon as the humanoids were within reach, the diving unit unleashed a large net in an attempt to trap one of them.

It is uncertain exactly what happened next and in what order, but shortly after deploying the net, it appeared that the humanoids unleashed some kind of sonar weapon that sent the divers shooting to the surface and then 50 feet into the air. Four of the men suffered horrendous injuries due to being sent to the surface so quickly and required prolonged treatment in a decompression chamber. Three of them eventually died. According to some researchers into the case, several fishermen witnessed the incident, stating that the divers suddenly burst out of the surface of the water and were sent high into the air.

Whatever the truth of the account, there are plenty of interesting details to examine in the aftermath of the incident. For example, only several weeks earlier, in May 1982, a MIG fighter jet went missing somewhere in the woodlands of Voronezh, resulting in a military search unit combing the area. As they entered a clearing in the forests, they saw a humanoid figure, approximately 10 feet in height, wearing a tight-fitting, one-piece silver suit. It doesn’t take the sharpest mind to note that this description is almost identical to the apparent humanoid figures witnessed beneath the waters of Lake Baikal. Incidentally, the figure immediately turned and ran from the scene as soon as it noticed the search unit. A moment later, a flash of bright light and a loud boom caused the unit to look upwards, just in time to see a glowing object rising high into the sky before disappearing.

Also of interest is an article that appeared in 1992 in the paranormal magazine Anomaliya, in which a former veteran of the Soviet military, Mark Shteynburg claimed that he had heard of the Lake Baikal encounter directly from Major-General Demyanko while he was part of similar training exercises at the Issyk Kul Lake. According to Shteynburg, Demyanko briefed the unit on how they should be alert to tall humanoid figures in the water. He termed these humanoids “swimmers” and stated that there had been several encounters with them in various lakes in Soviet territory, including at Lake Baikal. The briefing ended with orders that if any of the unit were confronted with such beings, they were not to approach them but report them only.

It is also worth noting some of the other strange encounters documented at Lake Baikal over the years. Some reports, for example, state that a Soviet military jet crashed into the lake at some point in the late 1950s while in pursuit of a strange, silver craft. Further, according to the reports, the air traffic controllers who heard the pilot’s final distress calls before the craft entered the water were later forced to sign official secrecy papers that bound them not to talk of the incident. Perhaps it is not too surprising, then, that there is no official record of the crash.

Even stranger, in April 2009, as the International Space Station was photographing the ancient waters of the lake while orbiting overhead, two circular breaks were clearly visible in the ice. Examination of these anomalies – both of which were perfectly circular and approximately three miles in diameter - showed that it was likely that something circular had broken through the ice sheet from beneath. Could these breaks in the ice have been made by a craft occupied by the ten-foot humanoid entities? With this last question in mind, it is also interesting to note an incident in 2016 when multiple local residents reported seeing huge flashes of green lights above Lake Baikal. 

Perhaps one of the most thought-provoking potential extraterrestrial encounters unfolded in Earth’s orbit onboard the Soviet space station, Salyut 7 in July 1984 – another account that, while minimally reported on at the time, really came to light in full following the end of the Cold War with the release of once-classified documents. Six individuals on board the space station, on two separate occasions, reported seeing bizarre “angel-like” manifestations outside the craft. Even stranger, these floating entities even had wings and even seemed to exude feelings of peace and tranquility.

The first of these bizarre sightings unfolded on July 12th, 1984, when a strange bright orange cloud suddenly enveloped the space station out of nowhere. This strange orange glow to their surroundings made the crew think, at first, that there had been some kind of explosion onboard the space station. Having realized this wasn’t the case, however, the three cosmonauts - Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov and Oleg Atkov - rushed to the portholes, the light becoming almost blinding as they peered outside. Each was more than shocked to see what they described as “angels” floating around the ship. They would further describe these entities as having a wingspan similar to the size of a 747 jet, with each being approximately 80 feet tall. Even more remarkable, one of the cosmonauts later stated that one of these entities smiled at them as if acknowledging their presence on the space station. These beings remained outside the craft for around ten minutes before suddenly disappearing. Just short of two weeks later, though, they appeared once more.

On July 17th, following the successful docking of the Soyuz T-12 with the Salyut 7, three more cosmonauts boarded the space station - Vladimir Dzhanibekov, Svetlana Savitskaya, and Igor Volk. Despite the events of July 12th, Savitskaya was there to achieve one thing only: to become the first woman to conduct a spacewalk before her American counterpart, Kathryn Sullivan, who NASA was hoping would achieve this, and which is a good indicator as to the propaganda one-upmanship backdrop these strange events played out against. Savitskaya achieved this feat on July 25th – as she was doing so, however, further bizarre goings-on were unfolding.

The strange angel-like entities returned, with all six of the cosmonauts witnessing them. The details were much the same as the first incident, with the strange beings floating around the ship gracefully, and acknowledging and smiling at the crew members. Once more, the cosmonauts reported the incident to mission control, noting that the entities remained for several minutes before disappearing as they had done previously.

Interestingly or not, the two incidents were officially put down to some kind of mass hallucination. We have to ask how likely it might be that such a group hallucination would occur on two separate occasions involving six different individuals. Even the most skeptical of people would have to admit that was unlikely at best. Furthermore, when all six of the cosmonauts went through a barrage of physical and mental tests upon arriving back to Earth, there was nothing to back up the hallucination theory. It is also interesting to note that in more recent years, apparent whistleblowers from NASA have offered that these angel-like beings are often photographed by the Hubble telescope, although they are obviously not released to the public.   

While there is nothing to suggest that the Soviet authorities were embellishing the incidents, or even that they were outright lies altogether, there is perhaps good reason to suspect that in our next encounter.

Without a doubt, one of the most intriguing claims of UFOs and alien civilizations to come out of the Soviet Union, particularly during the Cold War period, are the claims of the so-called Bosich Space Wreckage. According to a report in the summer of 1979 in the British tabloid newspaper, Reveille, a Russian scientist had discovered the crippled remains of an alien spacecraft orbiting the Earth.

The claims came from astrophysicist, Professor Sergei Bosich, who claimed he had located and identified ten separate pieces of wreckage, with two of these pieces measuring more than 100 feet. Using computer analysis, Bosich and his team managed to trace all ten pieces of wreckage back to an origin and date. According to their workings out, each piece had entered into orbit from the same spot on December 18th, 1955 – essentially, on this date, the alien spacecraft had exploded, the debris entering into orbit around our planet. Even more fascinating, by studying the dimensions of each piece of wreckage, Bosich estimated that the object – when in one piece – likely measured 200 feet in length and was 100 feet wide. More remarkable still, Bosich put forward that the wreckage could contain the remains of alien crew members, not to mention advanced alien technology.

The article went on to detail Bosich’s plans to put into action a rescue mission of sorts and have the debris brought back down to Earth so it could be studied and possibly be reassembled. It was put forward that if one such spacecraft could reach Earth’s orbit then another one could, and if these extraterrestrial visitors proved hostile, it could be in humanity’s interest to know as much about them and their technology as possible.

Following this information entering into the public arena, both the American and British authorities showed tentative and cautious interest in the claims. In fact, this interest was such that the director of NASA’s Space Shuttle Office of Space Technology, Dr. Myran Malkin, offered that they would consider a joint salvage operation with their Soviet counterparts if the Soviet authorities requested their assistance.

Similar sentiments were made by Dr. Desmond King-Hele, a space researcher at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough in the United Kingdom, stating that they would be interested in joining a potential retrieval mission if the Soviet authorities made more information available to them. He added the caveat, however, that it was most likely that the “wreckage” was nothing more than general space debris, adding that there were (at the time) around 4000 known pieces of space debris orbiting the Earth. Furthermore, should Bosich share his research with him, he was confident he could identify most if not all the pieces he had identified with known space debris.

The Soviet authorities, though, remained tight-lipped on the claims, at least officially. They did, however, dismiss King-Hele’s assertions that the objects Bosich had identified were nothing more than space debris, and they used the date of the alleged explosion – December 18th, 1955 – as proof that such debris didn’t exist at the time. The date of the apparent explosion was almost two years before the first manmade object in space, the Soviet satellite, Sputnik 1. They further dismissed claims that the objects could be nothing more than pieces of a meteor, offering that meteors don’t simply explode for no reason. Ultimately, by dismissing such explanations, they were indirectly putting forward that Bosich and his team were correct in their assessment that the objects were debris from some kind of spacecraft not of Earthly origin.

Were the Soviet authorities looking to retrieve the potential wreckage themselves and so locking the powers of the West out of such a momentous discovery? Or might the whole thing, as we mentioned in our opening, have been part of a huge disinformation campaign, both to see how far such stories would travel in the West, as well as attempting to draw them into searching for something that never existed, and so causing embarrassment on the international stage, not to mention wasting funds and resources at the same time.

Or could there be another possibility? Could it be possible that a top-secret international recovery mission did go ahead, with the debris being brought to an equally top-secret location and then studied without the public being aware?

Whether it was the intention of the Soviet regime to draw in the space agencies of the West to embark on what would be nothing more than a wild goose chase in space or not is open to debate. As is whether some kind of top-secret retrieval mission did go ahead behind closed cosmic doors. There are, though, independent claims and suggestions of other researchers that are worth noting. In an article in the May 14th, 1954 edition of the San Francisco Examiner, for example, it was claimed that two researchers, Dr. Lincoln La Paz and Clyde Tombaugh, had discovered two satellites orbiting the Earth at a distance of 400 and 600 miles respectively. Of further interest, a similar article of orbiting objects appeared in the St. Louis Dispatch as far back as the late 1940s.

As there were no known manmade objects in orbit during this time, we might ask if these objects were two of the unknown objects that became two of the pieces of wreckage noted by Bosich. Could it be, for example, that there were two alien spacecraft in near-Earth orbit in the late 1940s and early fifties, one of which exploded resulting in the ten pieces of sizeable debris in December 1955?

It is also worth highlighting an article that appeared in 1969 in Icarus magazine by American astronomer, John Bagby. In it, he relayed that he had discovered ten “moonlets” orbiting the Earth. Of further interest, Bagby’s research suggested that all ten of these objects had come from a single, larger object. Even more spine-tingling, Bagby had managed to trace the timeline back to the date of the separation of the objects into the ten moonlets – December 18th, 1955, the same date arrived at by Bosich a decade later. Make of that what you will.

Interestingly or not, around a decade later, with the fall of the Soviet Union looking increasingly likely, another UFO case entered the public arena with some suggesting that this was another case of disinformation looking to test the new transparency agreement between the East and West (the Glasnost policy). According to a report from the Russian news agency TASS on October 9th, 1989, on September 27th of the same year, a huge, shiny “banana-shaped object” appeared in the skies over Voronezh before descending and landing in the middle of a public park as hundreds, perhaps thousands of people looked on.

Following the landing, several humanoid robotic figures, each wearing shiny, silver suits and bronze-colored boots, emerged from the craft and approached a small group of people standing nearby (although it is not clear if any further interaction between the onlookers and the apparent alien entities took place). After several moments, the occupants reentered the craft, which then rose into the air and disappeared into the distance. The landing site was examined by scientists, who detected a strange substance on the ground where the craft had been, as well as “two pieces of unidentified rocks” that “cannot be found on Earth!”

The Associated Press soon picked up the report, and, following further inquiries with the Russian news provider, further articles appeared in such newspapers as the New York Times, and even TIME magazine. In fact, when TIME ran an article on the encounter in its October 23rd, 1989 issue, they highlighted other similar encounters that had been reported on in the Soviet Union.

In the Socialist Industry newspaper, for example, an article offered that several weeks previously, in the region of Perm, a milkmaid encountered a strange creature that looked like a man but was “taller than average with shorter legs!” An article in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper several weeks after the apparent landing at Voronezh, reports of an “Abominable Snowman” coincided with the registering of “energies” at Perm which Soviet researchers determined was a “landing field for flying saucers!” That same article also detailed an encounter between journalist, Pavel Mukhortov and an extraterrestrial from the “Red Star of the Constellation of Libra”. According to the telepathic communication that took place, this extraterrestrial stated that taking the journalist to their home planet (as he had asked) presented a danger for them due to “thought bacteria!”

American journalist, Howard G. Chua-Eoan, was more than aware of the stories coming out of the Soviet Union during this time, and he offered that the reason for the sudden open reporting on such bizarre encounters was almost certainly to test the Glasnost policy in order to see how far such stories would go, and to see how seriously the Western media, and Western public, would take them. It is certainly an interesting suggestion.

It is perhaps worth very quickly highlighting some of the words from former President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, whose two terms in the 1980s led up to the eventual break-up of the Soviet Union. In 1988, for example, he stated during a speech with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that he would “occasionally think how quickly our differences, worldwide, would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world!” While most people put this remark down to elaborate speech-writing, others offered it was a moment of unintended candidness from Reagan. Could it really be that behind such policies as Glasnost and apparent disinformation, behind closed doors, particularly towards the end of the Cold War, East and West were working together in the light of an “outside alien threat”?  

Whatever the truth regarding which accounts were nothing more than purposely planted disinformation and which were genuine encounters, the fact that UFO and alien encounters were happening regularly in the Soviet Union during the years of the Cold War would seem almost certain. These are just some of the many accounts available for examination. Indeed, entire volumes could be written about UFOs in the Soviet Union during the Cold War years, and we will almost certainly return to this location and era to explore more of them in a future article. For now, though, we should perhaps contemplate just how many UFO and alien encounters took place in Soviet territory during the Cold War years, and what implications these might have had on the world stage, albeit the world stage that exists in the shadows.