THE UFO BRIEFING DOCUMENT 1989: MULTIPLE WITNESS CASE AT RUSSIAN MISSILE BASE Very little was known about UFO investigations in Russia and the republics of the former USSR during the communist era. UFOs were officially labeled "capitalist propaganda" in the 1950s and 1960s. A few scientists such as Professor Felix Zigel and Yuri Fomin documented UFO incidents, but their results were rarely published and circulated mostly in samizdat form. Ufology began to prosper in the early 1980s when "Commissions on Anomalous Phenomena" were established under the patronage of a few academicians. Stories of secret military UFO investigations began to spread with glasnost, increasing with the break-up of the USSR. Retired military and intelligence officers were now speaking up and offering documents. One collection, covering a 10-year period of military UFO investigations between 1978 and 1988, was sold by its former director, Colonel Boris Sokolov, to American journalist George Knapp and to ABC News.124 In 1991, the Committee of State Security (KGB) declassified 124 pages of documents of "Cases of Observations of Anomalous Occurrences in the Territory of the USSR, 1982-1990," covering a total of 17 regions.125 One of the most interesting cases in the KGB file is a multiple-witness CE-I (Close Encounter of the First Kind) at an army missile base in the district of Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan Region, on the night of July 28-29, 1989. The file is surely incomplete, but still offers an interesting glimpse into the maneuverability of UFOs. The dossier consists of the depositions of seven military witnesses (two junior officers, a corporal and four privates) plus illustrations of the object by the observers, and a brief case summary by an unnamed KGB officer. (Neither the author nor the department are identified, but the document is at the beginning of the KGB file on the Kapustin Yar incident). It states in part: A nearby base reported the UFO from 23.30 hrs. on July 28 until 1.30 hrs. on July 29. The report continues: The KGB file on the case is obviously incomplete, since there is no data on the jet scramble mission or whether ground or airborne radar detection was also reported. Nevertheless, the hand written descriptions by the seven witnesses from the signal center do provide interesting reading about the flight behavior exhibited by the UFOs. The most detailed communication was submitted by the Officer-on-Duty, Ensign Valery N. Voloshin. A Captain from the telegraph center informed him at 23:20 hrs. that "an unidentified flying object, which he called a flying saucer, was hovering over the military unit for over an hour." After confirming the sighting with the operation signal officer on duty, Ensign Voloshin and Private Tishchayev climbed the first part of an antenna tower. According to his deposition: A drawing of the UFO was attached:
Private Tishcahayev essentially confirmed Ensign Voloshin's testimony. The guard-shift of Corporal Levin and Privates Bashev, Kulik and Litvinov basically tell the same story. They were all alerted by 1st Lt. Klimenko and they all saw up to three UFOs performing fantastic acrobatics in the sky, such as: All the testimonies coincided with the appearance of a jet fighter attempting to intercept the UFOs. The fighter made a first pass above the object apparently without seeing it. Then, according to Lt. Klimenko's deposition, "the airplane, which could be identified by its noise, approached the object, but the object disengaged so fast, that it seemed the plane stayed in one place." It is difficult to make a final evaluation of the Kapustin Yar CE-I, since no information about the scramble mission and possible radar tracking has been released by the KGB. But the detailed testimony of seven military witnesses, who were familiar with rocket launches and various aircraft because of their post (Kapustin Yar is somewhat equivalent to the White Sands Proving Grounds in New Mexico), appears to confirm the unusual flight characteristics and extraordinary maneuverability displayed by UFOs in many instances. Moreover, as in the SAC flap of 1975 and the Bentwaters affair in England in 1980, the UFOs seemed capable of "demonstrating a clear intent in the weapons storage area," as described in a 1975 declassified teletype concerning Loring AFB in Maine. 131 One of the official milestones of Soviet/Russian ufology occurred less than a year later, as a result of a radar-visual and jet scramble incident on the Pereslavl-Zalesskiy region, east of Moscow, on the night of March 21, 1990. A statement issued by Colonel-General of Aviation Igor Maltsev, Chief of the Main Staff of the Air Defense Forces, was published in the newspaper Rabochaya Tribuna. Unit commanders compiled "more than 100 visual observations" and passed them on to Gen. Maltsev, who stated: _______________________________________ FOOTNOTES 124. Knapp, George, "What the Russians Know About UFOs," MUFON 1994 International UFO Proceedings; "KGB UFO Files," ABC News Prime Time Live, broadcast originally in October 1994. 125. KGB UFO File released in 1991; excerpts of the documents published in English in "Classification: 'Secret' - From the KGB Archives," AURA-Z, No. 1, Moscow, March 1993. 126. KGB file entitled "Communication on Observation of Anomalous Event in the District of Kapustin Yar (July 28, 1989)"; English translation by Dimitri Ossipov. 127. Ensign Voloshin's Report in the Kapustin Yar KGB file, ibid. 128. Deposition by Pvt. Bashev, Kapustin Yar KGB file, ibid. 129. Deposition by Cpl. Levin, Kapustin Yar KGB file, ibid. 130. Deposition by Lt. Klimenko, Kapustin Yar KGB file, ibid. 131. Fawcett, L. and Greenwood, B., ibid. 132. "UFOs on Air Defense Radars," Rabochaya Tribuna, Moscow, April 19, 1990; English translation by the U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). |
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