Truly Bizarre and Fascinating UFO and Alien Incidents from Post-Soviet Russia

In our article Bizarre and Sensational UFO and Alien Conspiracies of the Old Soviet Union we explored some of the most mysterious UFO and alien cases to have occurred behind the Iron Curtain during the days of the Soviet regime, some of which very well could have been intentional exercises in disinformation aimed at clouding the waters for the powers of the West, as well as causing confusion and distrust among the population of the West. Following the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union, these claims and encounters continued, particularly in the immediate years following this in the 1990s. And while we should treat these cases with a similar pinch of salt for the same reasons as the Cold War incidents, they make for equally fascinating reading.

Before we look at some of the most remarkable UFO and alien encounters from post-Soviet Russia, though, it is worth our time exploring some UFO encounters from the pre-Soviet era. Arguably the earliest of these unfolded in the mid-seventeenth century in the town of Robozero, an account that appeared in a letter to “His Highness the Archimandrite Nikita” from a man named Ivachko Rievskoi.

According to the letter, at around noon on August 15th, 1663, while many members of the village were in the Church, a “great sound” was suddenly audible from outside, causing the congregation to flock from the church in order to see what the cause of the noise was. As the residents watched from the town square, a “large ball of fire” was visible moving across the skies. However, rather than being a meteor or comet, the object changed direction as it moved, eventually passing over the nearby lake. Further details of the incident state that the object was around 150 feet “from one edge to the other”, and even more remarkable, “two ardent rays” extended from the object.

At this point during the incident, the people ran back into the church in fright, looking to take cover from this bizarre aerial anomaly. Around an hour later, though, they returned to the square. To their amazement, almost as if it had been waiting for them, the fiery object appeared out of the clouds once more. It made its way over the lake, changing direction several times before disappearing again. A short time later, it appeared yet again, only this time it seemed much larger than before. It remained hovering over the lake for almost an hour and a half before moving once more over the water. As it did so, several local villagers who were in their fishing boat on the lake seemingly sustained severe burns from the object as it passed over them. Furthermore, the glow from the strange craft illuminated the water so that the depths could be seen around 30 feet down, and fish swam to the shore away from the otherworldly glow. Eventually, the craft took off into the distance and was not seen again.

According to the book Atlantis Returns Part 1: The Awakening by Colin K Smith, in 1892, there was an apparent wave of sightings of “floating oval objects” throughout Russia, while just over a decade later, in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, multiple Russian soldiers reported seeing very similar objects. Just short of a decade later, in 1912, multiple residents of St. Petersburg witnessed a “shiny metal apparatus” moving across the sky, remaining in view for around 20 minutes before disappearing into the distance.  

Of course, we know these sightings of strange objects and encounters with their apparent occupants continued throughout Soviet Russia during the twentieth century following the Russian Revolution. However, without a doubt, some of the most fascinating otherworldly encounters unfolded following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One of the strangest incidents from post-Soviet Russia unfolded at the very end of the Soviet regime, although it only came to light several years later in a declassified CIA file dated 1993, which itself came from apparent smuggled KGB files. According to the report, a silver saucer-shaped craft had appeared over a military training ground at an undisclosed location (some sources offer it was in or near Ukraine). Not long after the landing, whether intentionally or accidentally, a rocket was fired from the ground toward the craft, which brought it down to the ground. Moments later, much to the shock of the personnel at the facility, several humanoid entities with “large heads and large black eyes” emerged from the craft.

In response to this, several soldiers closed in on the downed vehicle. However, after they had taken only a few steps, the five humanoids “merged into one single object” that was the shape of a sphere. A moment later, a loud hissing and buzzing sound was heard, and it was clear that this sphere was growing brighter and larger. Then, without warning, it “flared up!” Those who looked on from a distance were horrified to see that the soldiers who had been approaching the craft (23 of them in total) had been “turned into stone” in an instant.

According to the report, the whereabouts of the humanoids remains unknown, but the crippled craft was taken into the possession of the Russian authorities and transferred to a “secret research facility” somewhere in Moscow. Several theories have been put forward, with one suggesting that the sphere formed by the humanoids was some kind of escape portal, with the soldiers being turned to stone simply being an unlucky consequence of this cosmic gateway. Others have suggested that the formation of the sphere and the flare-up that followed was some kind of self-destruct mechanism. Whatever the truth, the claims of the encounter are intriguing and thought-provoking.

Although the incident began in the final days of the Soviet regime in August 1991 (although, for all intents and purposes, this collapse was just a matter of months), an apparent UFO crash and recovery stretched well into the first years of the “new Russia”. The incident, known as the Grave of the Devil case, was documented by Russian ufologists Nikolay Subbotin and Emil Backurin and unfolded in the Shaitan Mazar (which translates as “Grave of the Devil”, hence the name) in the Tien Shan Mountains near the Chinese border with what is now Kyrgyzstan. According to their research, at around 5 pm on August 28th, 1991, Russian authorities became aware of a huge anomalous object that had appeared over the Caspian Sea. Radar operators began tracking the aerial anomaly immediately, estimating that it was around 2000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and at an altitude of around 21,000 feet. Furthermore, it was traveling at a blistering 6000 miles per hour.

As was standard procedure, authorities issued a “friend or foe” request from the mystery vehicle but received no response. Following this, Kapustin Yar was informed, and they too quickly picked up the strange craft. After confirming that there were none of their vehicles in the airspace, an alert was quickly raised, putting the Russian Air Force on immediate standby. Two MIG 29 fighter jets that were already airborne were vectored toward the craft, while two further MIGs were scrambled from the ground to join the pursuit. All pilots had one simple order – to force the object to land or, failing that, to shoot it down. A short time after these orders were issued, all four of the MIGs had radar confirmation of the curious craft, which was quickly followed by visual confirmation, which they described as “metallic grey and elongated”.

Another “friend or foe” request was issued by the leader of the squadron of MIGs, which, once more, was ignored. Moments later, as they had been instructed to do, the four MIGs closed in. And the closer they got, the more details they could make out of the object. They reported, for example, that there was some green-colored writing or symbols on the exterior of the craft that one of the pilots described as being some kind of “unknown language”. Furthermore, the pilots reported seeing two portholes at what they presumed was the front of the craft.

At this point, the leader of the MIGs requested further instructions from the ground. They were told to hold fire and continue to close in on the strange craft a little more. When they were parallel to it, they were ordered to fire several warning shots directly in front of it. In response, the MIGs closed from 2500 feet to a distance of 1500 feet, with two of the jets positioning themselves on either side of it. They then went to fire the ordered warning shots. However, at the very moment they went to do so, each of the plane’s electrical systems went down. Of more concern, though, was the fact that each of the jet’s engines began to fail. This forced the jets to retreat and head back to base, leaving the craft to head off into the distance. Almost as soon as it had moved off, the plane’s engines and electrical equipment came back to life.

As the planes were returning to base, radar operators on the ground continued to track the object, noting that it was seemingly heading out to the Aral Sea. Furthermore, it appeared to be moving at a blistering pace of around 42,000 miles per hour. As they followed its anticipated route, other airfields were warned to keep track of the object in order to avoid a mid-air collision with another aircraft, including civilian ones. This tracking continued for around 45 minutes before the object suddenly disappeared from the radar screen without warning. There was, though, more to come regarding this enthralling encounter.

The military would carry out their own investigation into the incident over the following weeks – and they would discover some remarkable details. According to several members of the local population, for example, on the day the object was tracked, they reported seeing a “huge object” crash into the region around the Shaitan Mazar mountains. In fact, so compelling were these reports that by the end of September, the military sent an expedition team to locate and recover any potential wreckage in the region. Rather than this expedition team being made purely of military personnel, it was comprised of several locals who knew the terrain well, several experienced mountain climbers, and several UFO researchers from the SAKKUFON organization led by Anton Bogatov.

After two weeks of searching, however, they found no sign of the wreckage. Rumors, though, reached the unit that a group of locals had found the crash site – and what’s more, all had seemingly suffered strange burns after doing so. In light of this information, the unit turned its focus to the Sary Dzhaz River valley. Once more, though, they failed to locate the crash site. By this point, several members of the search unit were suffering from severe frostbite, and a decision was made to return to base camp. Although their search efforts had been unsuccessful, the rumors of the downed UFO continued, and several months later, another search was underway.

By November 1991, the Russian Air Force appeared to have located the crash site and the wreckage of the otherworldly vehicle. A heavy-duty military helicopter was used to attempt to hoist the wreckage from the treacherous mountain terrain. However, the attempt failed, causing the helicopter to crash, killing all those onboard. Following this, it was determined that a second ground search would take place in the summer of 1992. Once more, SAKKUFON was informed and invited to participate in the search. However, this time, the retrieval mission was led by a retired Russian Major – German Svechkov. Furthermore, all of those involved in the retrieval mission had to undergo extended training and examinations.

This second ground search began in June 1992, with the search teams splitting into three different units to cover three different locations at once. And this time, after several weeks of searching, it appeared the unit had found the crash site in the Grave of the Devil region. The oblong object lay on the ground, now broken in two. Members of the retrieval unit later stated that as soon as they approached the crippled craft, they could feel a strange energy coming from it – an energy they described as palpable. Of more concern to the unit, though, was the fact that the closer they got to the downed craft, the more they began to experience feelings of anxiety and fear, feelings that only increased the closer they got to this apparent otherworldly vehicle.

The unit also began to experience problems with their electrical equipment and devices, as well as distinct problems with their compasses, which, instead of pointing north, all pointed directly at the strange craft. It was because of the malfunctioning equipment that many of the tests and examinations that had been planned had to be abandoned. They did, though, manage to record many intriguing details and eventually worked out a likely timeline of events that led to the craft crashing down into the mountainous region.

It was determined that the object – which had been traveling more than 40,000 miles per hour – had likely hit an overhang in the cliff, which then caused it to split into two before it came to a stop in the valley below. It was because of this splitting of the craft that the search crew were able to see inside of it. They described “strange beams” inside of the craft, although there was no sign of any of the crew. Furthermore, they could also see the strange symbols on the exterior reported by the MIG fighter pilots. The search unit recreated these symbols, which language experts eventually studied, although none of them had ever seen anything like them before. The unit also attempted to capture photographs of the craft, but all appeared blurred when developed as if the strange energy field emanating from the object had somehow affected the film.

The search unit also discovered the wreckage of the military helicopter that had attempted to hoist part of the wreckage away several months earlier. The search unit now theorized that the strange electromagnetic energy had likely played havoc with the helicopter's navigation and electrical equipment, which then likely caused it to crash. However, somewhat more ominously, there was no sign whatsoever of any of the crew. This presented two possibilities to the search unit – either the occupants of the downed UFO were still somewhere nearby and had taken the bodies of the helicopter crew, or the Russian military had discreetly recovered them. And if the latter were true, then the question would be why would such a discreet recovery mission have gone ahead?

Following this successful second recovery mission, a third such mission was planned. However, it would not go ahead for another six years until August 1998. This third mission, however, lacked the funding of the second one, as well as the experience of German Svechkov, who declined to lead it. The unit did find the crash site. However, rather than finding the wreckage of the craft, all they found were the markers that the second search team had left to mark out the dimensions of the object. This led to speculation that the military had secretly recovered the remains themselves, which perhaps explains why there was such a long time between the second and third search missions. Indeed, the third search mission only brought up more questions than answers.

Why, for example, did Scheckov opt not to take part in the third mission? While he offered that he wished to concentrate his time and efforts on his business, could it be, as speculative as it might be, given his military background, that he was aware that Russian authorities had already recovered the wreckage? Once more, was this the reason that there was such a delay between the second and third recovery missions? And what should we make of the fact that none of the photographs or video footage was useable? While the electromagnetic energy could very well have affected the equipment, we might ask why the authorities didn’t attempt to capture imagery from further away, or even from a plane flyover. Perhaps they did, and the photographs or video footage remains classified in a Russian vault somewhere. One thing is certain, this lack of photographic evidence only plays into the hands of skeptics. Ultimately, the case remains of interest to UFO researchers and investigators today three decades later, and will do so for the foreseeable future.

Just before the third search mission of the Grave of the Devil UFO case, on the evening of February 19th, 1997, in St. Petersburg, another intriguing incident unfolded. What is particularly interesting about this case is that it shared similar details to the Phoenix Lights UFO sighting that occurred only a month later in the United States. At around 7 pm on the night in question, multiple residents reported seeing a strange “cluster of lights hovering overhead”, including several pilots and air traffic control staff. Even more remarkable, several people managed to capture video footage of the encounter.

The anomaly was first noticed by radar operators at St. Petersburg airport when several unaccounted-for blips appeared on their screens. They immediately looked to the sky for visual confirmation and were more than shocked to see several strange lights overhead. Victor Laxtushin was one such witness who watched the events unfold. He recalled watching the lights disappear and then reappear several times before they formed themselves into a triangular formation. The lights remained visible for around 20 minutes before finally disappearing for good, by which time the airport had received multiple calls from concerned residents.

An official military investigation was actioned, but no explanation was reached. While some people were certain the lights had an otherworldly origin, others believed they were some kind of top-secret military vehicle, although it was questioned why such a vehicle, if it did belong to the military, would operate in full view of a densely populated city. Given the similarities to the Phoenix Lights incident that took place around a month later, some researchers have put forward that the two sightings could very well be connected.

Just short of two years after the St. Petersburg incident, on December 12th, 1999, in Volgograd, an even stranger incident unfolded. According to the report, which was documented by UFO researcher, Anton Belousov, at around 9:30 pm on the night in question, a local woman – Larissa – was a passenger in a car driven by her father when she spotted “two figures dressed in black” at the side of the lonely highway. The next thing the pair realized, an unsettling thick, yellow fog appeared out of nowhere and completely enveloped their vehicle. Larissa turned to her father in shock and was perplexed by his apparent lack of reaction to the bizarre situation unfolding around them. He simply stared ahead at the road before them, even ignoring Larissa’s questions as to what the strange yellow fog was. Then, things turned even stranger as a sudden “clang” came out of nowhere, causing Larissa to jump in fright. Even stranger, a voice appeared in her head telling them to “keep traveling!”

Things appeared to jump forward following this as the next thing the pair realized, their vehicle was parked at the roadside. Now, instead of only the road ahead of them, they could both see the lights of the village ahead of them. Not only could neither of them recall having traveled so far, but they couldn’t account for what appeared to be several hours of missing time. Confused and a little unnerved, Larissa’s father started the car once more, and they continued on their way home.

The following morning, they both sat and discussed what they could remember of the previous evening. To her shock, Larissa’s father recalled seeing two strange creatures with “large heads and slanted eyes” looking at him. As the days went on, they agreed that they should seek hypnotic regression in order to recover their missing memories of that strange December night. And when they did, the revelations were indeed remarkable.

Shortly after the strange, yellow fog had surrounded their car, a “black, shiny triangular craft” appeared directly over them. It proceeded to descend in front of them, blocking their path and causing Larissa’s father to bring their vehicle to a stop. Their next memory was of being inside a strange room – a room they assumed was inside the triangular craft. This is an interesting detail and one that lends a touch of credibility to the account, as many people who have seemingly been abducted by aliens often recall seeing the craft, sometimes of being drawn towards it, but never of actually entering it, almost as if at the point of entry they were intentionally incapacitated.

Once they were inside this strange room, they each recalled two strange humanoid entities being in the room with them. Each had a head that was clearly too large and out of proportion for their frame, and each had a pair of large, black eyes – almost identical to the memories that Larissa’s father recalled the morning after the encounter. Larissa had further memories of entering into some kind of telepathic dialogue with these strange humanoids, although she couldn’t recall the content of this telepathic communication, or how she was able to communicate in such a way in the first place. She further recalled sitting in a strange chair that appeared as though it was molded around her body as if it was made exclusively for her. During this time, a further four of the humanoid creatures were visible around her.

Perhaps the strangest detail of all, though, was being handed a “human-alien hybrid baby” that had a particularly oversized head but with “sparkling blue eyes”, just like a human. This is another interesting detail, as many UFO researchers have come to the conclusion that part of the reason for these alien abductions is to create some kind of alien-human hybrid race. On many occasions, particularly with female abductees, the witnesses recall being given a baby to hold temporarily. Quite often, it is communicated to them that this hybrid child was their very own, created during a previous abduction encounter. We might ask if this was the case here and if Larissa had undergone a previous alien abduction encounter.

Following this, the next thing the pair could recall was sitting in the parked car at the roadside, the fog and the strange craft now gone and the lights of their village visible in the distance. Although they each found the experience harrowing at the time, both Larissa and her father had the impression that the creatures were benevolent and meant no harm to humanity.

According to an article in Chronometer Magazine, on the evening of January 1st, 2004, in Ivanovo, a group of friends were celebrating the new year when they decided to take a walk outside and take in the atmosphere of the city’s celebrations. As they were looking up and enjoying the fireworks, they suddenly became aware of a strange “large, orange sphere” that was moving across the sky in their direction. And what’s more, the object appeared to be descending. As the three friends watched this strange object approach, one of them suddenly noticed a strange humanoid figure watching them a short distance away. Then, the already strange incident turned even stranger.

The strange figure, suddenly turned around to face the man, a bizarre smile on its face. However, as it turned, he could see that its dimensions were completely flat, with the witness later describing it as looking as though “it had been run over by an asphalt roller!” The next thing the man knew, some kind of “invisible wave” hit him. He believed that he must have temporarily blacked out as the next thing he could recall was the orange sphere, and the “flat humanoid” had disappeared. Even stranger, the witness recalled that while his two friends recalled seeing the glowing sphere, they could not recall it physically disappearing, only that it was no longer there. Stranger still, neither friend recalled the presence of the flat humanoid.

Several years later, on the evening of September 29th, 2007, an anonymous witness spotted a glowing object over Moscow. According to their report – which they made to a UFO website – on the night in question, the witness had just left the subway and was making their way home when they noticed a “red or orange dot” overhead that he stated was “as bright as Venus” but was definitely not a star or a planet. They further recalled that the object was stationary at an approximate altitude of 2000 to 3000 feet. He watched the glowing aerial anomaly for around a minute before it began moving, a movement that he described as “smooth”. He watched it head in an easterly direction for around 10 seconds before it simply “faded from sight!”

Without a doubt, one of the most remarkable and intriguing encounters with alleged extraterrestrial entities to come out of Post-Soviet Russia is that of Aleshenka, an alleged alien baby that was apparently discovered in the woods one evening in the small village of Kaolinory near Kyshtym. According to the account, on a particularly hot evening in the summer of 1996, an elderly lady named Tamara Vasilieuna Prosvirina was walking through the woods when she heard a noise that sounded like a wounded animal moving in the trees and vegetation close by. However, when the sounds changed to something similar to a small child crying, she soon located where the noises were coming from. She made her way over to the scene and was more than shocked to see what she believed was an abandoned baby. She wrapped the baby in her shawl and took the “infant” home to her apartment. She cared for the creature as if it was indeed a child, even naming it Aleshenka.

However, when her daughter-in-law – who was also called Tamara – visited the apartment and saw the creature for herself, she was horrified, later stating that the creature was “something not from this planet!” She described the creature as having a head that was shaped almost like an onion, and that was larger than it should have been for its body. Furthermore, it had unsettlingly large eyes that narrowed and widened “just like cats do” and a small hole where you would expect a nose to be. Most disturbing of all, though, was how the creature ate the food that her mother-in-law fed to it. Tamara stated that she “never saw its mouth move” at any point, offering that it appeared as though the creature “sucked it up”, adding that it didn’t so much eat the food as “consumed it!” As bizarre as these descriptions are from Tamara, although she has been interviewed on numerous occasions over the years, she has not once deviated from her version of events.

Tamara did her best to keep her mother-in-law’s discovery secret, but the old lady’s ramblings about her “new baby” soon spread around the small village, and, in light of her previous mental health issues, she was ultimately incarcerated in a mental institution several weeks later. However, despite her protestations at the time of her incarceration that there was a small baby in the apartment, her pleas were ignored, and the creature was undiscovered and left alone in the old lady’s apartment.

From here, there are slight discrepancies regarding what exactly happened next. Some sources say that Tamara (the daughter-in-law) returned to the old lady’s apartment and discovered the now-dead Aleshenka, who then informed her friend, Vladimir Nurdinov (who often visited the old lady), while some sources offered that it was the other way around, with Nurdinov discovering the dead creature and then informing Tamara of his grim discovery. Whatever the truth, after the pair became aware that the creature had died (presumably of starvation and lack of fluids), they immediately informed a local policeman, Vladimir Bendlin. He attended the apartment with the pair and took possession of the corpse so that tests could be carried out and the body analyzed.

Bendlin suspected the remains to be that of a deceased and possibly deformed child and asked a friend, Dr. Irina Yermoleava, to examine the corpse. Her initial conclusions were the same as Bendlin’s – that the body was that of a premature and deformed child, possibly a far-reaching victim of the 1957 Kyshtym nuclear disaster. Despite this, Bendlin decided to get a second opinion from his clinical assistant, Lyubov Romanowa – and her conclusions were much different.

Her analysis determined that the creature was “not of human origin”, and certainly wasn’t a deformed child, of which she had seen many. She elaborated that there were simply too many differences in the skeletal remains (she listed 20 such differences), perhaps most specifically, the fact that the head was made up of four completely different bones that were “completely different to a human being!” Not long after these revelations, the small village became the focus of UFO and paranormal investigators and enthusiasts from around the world, despite many of the local population dismissing the account as the “ravings” of the “mad old woman” who often roamed the woods and cemeteries at night. Soon, it wasn’t just investigators of the anomalous that were descending on the small village, but national and international news stations and television channels. And the more people who arrived in the region, the more that locals were prepared to embrace the account, not least as television networks were more than happy to “throw money” at anyone who could tell them about this apparently fascinating discovery.

At the same time, Tamara and Nurdinov came under intense scrutiny, with suggestions that they had made up the whole affair for financial gain, although there was no proof that this was the case, not least as Bendlin had witnessed the creature and had two sets of analysis carried out, tests that showed that the remains were indeed authentic and had once been “living tissue” – essentially, it had once been very much alive.

It was around this time that respected Ufologist, Boris Zolotov arrived in the small village, and after making contact with Bendlin, he offered to have the remains DNA tested, something, perhaps in error, Bendlin agreed to, and handed over the remains to Zolotov. Aleshenka was never seen again. Eventually, a television station that had taken an interest in the case managed to track Zolotov down several months later, eager to discuss the results of the apparent DNA tests. However, his response was that his assistant had been driving the remains to the lab in anticipation of the tests when “a UFO came down right there in the road and took him back!”

As we might imagine, theories differ as to just what happened to the remains of Aleshenka. Some people offered that it was not a UFO or its occupants that had taken the remains but the Russian authorities, while others suggested that Zolotov had no intention of ever carrying out any DNA tests and had instead procured the remains in order to hand them to the Russian authorities in an effort to suppress the incident. Whatever the truth, the whereabouts of the body remain unknown almost three decades later. There are, though, plenty of other areas of intrigue and loose ends regarding the case.

Unbeknown to most, including Zolotov, was the fact that Bendlin had a blanket that the body had initially been wrapped in. It was given to him by a mystery woman who claimed she had discreetly taken possession of the blanket shortly after the elderly Tamara had been taken into custody. She was happy to hand the blanket to Bendlin, as long as he performed DNA tests on it, something he duly did. And the results were intriguing, to say the least. They showed there were two sets of DNA on the blanket. One was most definitely human – most likely Tamara’s or the old lady’s. The other, though, was “unknown to science” – essentially, it was alien, and most certainly not human.

In a further bizarre and ominous twist, the elderly Tamara met a mysterious and brutal end when she was killed in a hit-and-run accident following her “escape” from the mental health facility where she was being held. Interestingly or not, she had been due to speak with a respected hypnotic regression expert, Mar Milkhimer, in the days following her untimely demise as part of his investigation into the Aleshenka mystery. Even stranger, Milkhimer himself died of a sudden heart attack only days after arriving in the village. Make of those strange and unsettling events what you will.

While, as we mentioned in the opening, we should treat many of these accounts to come out of post-Soviet Russia with a certain amount of salt, the Aleshenka case stands out due to the footage and witness testimony, with the case even appearing on the television show The Unexplained Files. It is certainly a case that remains of interest to researchers and investigators today.

Perhaps the strangest account of all to come out of Russia concerns apparent clandestine activities in Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake in Antarctica, below Vostok Station, a Russian research facility on the icy continent. The account is particularly intriguing as it is almost certainly a fascinating blend of fiction taken as fact intertwined with hearsay and very real events, although some researchers would suggest that this murkiness is the perfect way to hide and suppress such activities.

It is also worth noting that Antarctica is a place of mystery and intrigue and a location where numerous conspiracies have swirled for years of suppressed evidence of a lost ancient civilization being present deep below the thick sheets of ice, and even of an alien presence on the frozen continent. And while these claims should also be taken with a large helping of salt, they remain persistent. Many scientists, however, believe the conditions in Antarctica, particularly in and around Lake Vostok, are very likely similar to those on one of Jupiter’s main moons, Europa, which some people believe could be the most likely place that alien life could be found in our solar system.

With all of this in mind, we will turn our attention to the apparent claims from an alleged member of one of these Russian research projects, Dr. Anton Padalka, an account that most people accept was a fictional account that has, intentionally or not, been put across as fact. According to the alleged leaked report, Padalka claimed that a 14-armed octopus was discovered in the icy waters of Lake Vostok – a creature that was labeled Organism 46-B. Further, according to the account, this creature was similar to a glass octopus, but much more evolved. One of the most intriguing claims made about Organism 46-B was its alleged ability to paralyze any potential prey or threat with its venom – venom that could be unleashed from up to 150 feet away.

Without a doubt, though, the most remarkable detail about this apparent newly-discovered species of octopus was its ability to alter its form in order to mimic other creatures. According to Padalka, scientists documented 15 transformations from its original form into other “aquatic species”. However, it was transformation number 16 that was most mind-blowing – and deadly.

According to the account, Padalka was on an observation mission with an unnamed marine biologist when they happened upon another member of the research team. However, before they realized what was happening, the marine biologist had been “ripped to pieces” and the “crew member” had returned to its original form – that of the octopus, or Organism 46-B. Following this deadly attack, the research team set about attempting to trap and capture the creature, something they were successful in doing. However, no sooner had they brought their catch to the surface than a Russian military security team took possession of it as part of security measures.

Padalka stated that the Russian authorities had goals of “weaponizing” both the paralyzing venom of the creature and its shapeshifting abilities. And here is where the waters become murky. Padalka claimed that the authorities began a campaign of disinformation in order to suppress the find. Furthermore, the entrance to the lake (which had taken over a decade to construct) was suddenly sealed shut.

It is also worth mentioning that in 2016, multiple political and religious leaders from around the world traveled to Antarctica for some kind of discreet meeting, the contents or outcome of which have never been publicly revealed. As we might imagine, in the wake of this secrecy, many theories began to swirl online as to why this apparent clandestine meeting took place. And while some of these theories were bordering on the preposterous, all agreed that there was a definite reason such a rendezvous had occurred.

One person who had taken an interest in this meeting was author and researcher, Steve Quayle, who examined the meeting and Antarctica in general in his book, Empire Beneath The Ice. He asked the question, “What really is going on down there?”, adding that he didn’t think the “Russian Patriarch Kirill is going down there to meet penguins!” Indeed, as flippant a comment as that might be, there would appear to be a certain amount of truth to it. In the same book, Quayle offered that, “Someone, or something, has summoned the world’s leaders” to the region, but so far, that someone or something remains a mystery, as does the reason for such a summoning. However, when we consider that such meetings could take place via a multi-participant video call, and the fact that multiple other more hospitable locations could have been used, whoever was behind this gathering would seemingly have untold power and influence. Ultimately, Quayle pulled no punches when he stated that it was his firm belief that an “alien presence” exists in Antarctica and that this presence “gives orders to the religious and political leaders of our day!”

Much like the cases of the old Soviet Union days, the cases from post-Soviet Russia are equally as intriguing. However, at least officially, with access to the country and the news that came out of it being much more transparent, the sharing of this information was much more immediate. That said, this immediate release of information could very well have been purposeful for the same reasons as the alleged purposeful disinformation campaigns of the Soviet era. In short, as fascinating as these accounts are – and continue to be – we must treat them with caution. On the one hand, many of these accounts are likely half-truths encased in fabrication. On the other, there are many sensational accounts that very likely mask very real and factual events. Indeed, many of the cases that have come out of Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union not only continue to fascinate researchers and investigators alike, but they continue to intertwine into the happenings of our contemporary world around the globe.