SUBJECT: SOVIET'S SAY UFO's ARE REAL FILE: UFO2611 _Out of This World in Russia_ by Bruce Maccabee, Ph.D. High-level Soviet Military Studies Concluded UFOs Are Real. There were more than 100 visual observations of UFOs by Soviet air force personnel on the night of March 21, 1990. Although an air force jet was scrambled, it was not ordered to shoot because "such an object may possess formidable capabilities for retaliation." In the United States, this event was not publicized, even though a Belgian jet-UFO case, which occurred only about two weeks later, was. The Moscow jet case was only one of a series of sightings that occurred during the same time period as the Belgian flap, from November 1989 through the spring of 1990. In June 1991, the chief of the City Militia of Budennovsk, along with several other militiamen, saw a cigar-shaped object nearly 100 meters (300 feet) long with flashing lights along its sides and two beams projecting out. A week later, over a hundred city people and militia saw it again (or a similar one). The occurrance of UFO sightings in the former Soviet Union is not a new event, but the extensive reporting of these sightings in the major press publications is. More than five years ago, one would never have found in the Soviet press stories such as these: Stalin ordered a top-level study of UFO sightings by Russia's best scientists in 1947, shortly afer learning of the reports that an object had crashed in the U.S. Southwest (near Roswell, New Mexico); UFOs were detected by Soviet surveillance radars in the late 1950s; top Soviet/Russian military officials consider UFO reality to be "beyond any doubt"; Gorbachev told a meeting of Ural workers that the UFO phenomenon is real and should be studied. What "out of this world" has happened in the (former) Soviet Union? Did they lose not only their economic and political system but also their minds? Certainly the sophisticated Western press wouldn't be caught printing such silly stories! Remember the ridiculous reports a few years ago (September 1989) about not only tall, three-eyed, but also short aliens that a bunch of kids saw strolling around a park in Veronezh? What garbage! All these reports were, no doubt, generated by nuts or hoaxers and reported in Soviet tabloid newspapers! Am I right? WRONG! The people making these reports ARE credible, and the reports have been published in the "mainstream press." The Veronezh sighting was reported by TASS. the official Soviet news agency, after an investigation of the events by Soviet scientists. The press release began with the statement, "Scientists have confirmed that an unidentifred flying object recently landed...." The results of further investigations by scientists have recently been published in a book, UFOs in Veronezh (published in Russian). The report of the March 21, 1990, sighting by Soviet Air Defense Forces was made by Colonel Igor Maltsev, who was (before the abortive August 1991 anti-Gorbachev coup) Chief of the Main Staff of the Soviet Air Defense Forces near Moscow. Maltsev's report was published in the Workers' Tribune (Rabochaya Tribuna) newspaper of April 19 (only eight days afer the same newspaper reported on the Belgian air force UFO chase during the night of March 31, 1990.) Over a year later, an article about the March 21 events was published in the Moscow News July 14. 1991). This article states that pilot reports made it possibIe to estimate the velocity. The UFO zoomed from a distance of 20 kilometers to a distance of 100 kilomelers from a jet aircraft in a minute, corresponding to a speed of 5,000 kilometers per hour (3,000 miles per hour). The UFO of March 21, 1990, was not attacked because it might possess "formidable capacities for retaliation" according to Commander in Chief of the Soviet Air Defense Forces and General of the Army Ivan Tretyak, who was at that time also a Deputy Minister of Defense. (Tretyak is - or was - the equivalent of a four-star general in the U.S.) General Tretyak confirmed Maltsev's earlier (April) report during an interview with the magazine Literature Gazette that was published on November 9, 1990. He said that the UFO had been photographed and detected on optical and thermal sensors on an air force interceptor, but could not be recorded by the onboard radar set. He speculated that the failure of the aircraft radar to detect the object was a result of something analogous to "stealth" technology. Tretyak piqued the interest of certain sectors of the American intelligence community when he said, "Measures which we are now taking (to counter the American Stealth program) will simultaneously promote the solution to the UFO riddle." The continuing interest of the Russian military in UFO sightings is reported in the August 22, 1992, issue of Trud, a newspaper with a large circulation in Russia. In a one-page article on UFOs, the Chairman of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, the successor to the Sovict Union), General Yevgeniy Tarosev, stated that the Soviet/Russian air force had recorded UFO sightings and had even scrambled aircraft in pursuit. According to Tarosev, "The reality of UFOs" is beyond doubt, but the "physical nature" of the phenomenon is unknown. He said there is classified information related to the interactions between pilots and UFOs (probably related to the technical capabilities of the sensors on the Russian aircrat). He said he was not aware of any overt hostility on the part of the UFOs, but that pilots were ordered to treat UFOs in a "peace-loving" manner. General Tarosev's statement, along with the earlier statements by Maltsev and Tretyak, indicates that high levels in the Russian military know that UFOs are real. This confirms what I was told directly by Vladimir Azhazha when we met in November 1990 in Japan. Azhazha is the director of the Soyuzufotsentr (Unified UFO Center) and a former submarine commander who has been involved in UFO research for many years. He is also a co-director of the newly formed Joint American-CIS Aerial Anomaly Federation. According to Azhazha, while he was in the Soviet navy some 15 or more years ago, he was directed to study UFO sightings by a man who is now an admiral (he wouldn't say who he is). This was in response to a bizarre event involving the interaction between a Soviet submarine and a UFO in the early 1970s. Azhazha told me that, in the higher levels of the Soviet military, UFOs are treated seriously. The opinion of the Soviet/Russian military is probably the underlying reason for Gorbachev's statement that UFOs are in fact real, which appeared in the newspaper Sovietskaya Molodezh on May 4. 1990. The report, mentioned previously, of a sighting by the City Militia of Budennovsk was published in the Workers' Tribune of June 22, 1991. The Tribune also stated that there were numerous sightings in nearby cities. The July 24, 1991, issue reports that a sergeant of the militia and his crew in their patrol car, as well as several other patrols in the area, saw a UFO that had landed. The sergeant reported seeing rays come out of the object, which hit the car and caused it to stall while immobilizing the crew. The July 24, 1991, issue of the Workers ' Tribune also reported that certain members of the USSR and the Ukrainian Academics of Science, starting in 1976, conducted experiments to determine the means by which UFOs move. They tried to establish a connection between electrical and gravitational forces, but were unable to do so. The results of their studies were reported to two commissions of the Academies which were studying the UFO problem. Radar observations of UFOs over the Soviet Union occurred in the late 1950s, according to an article in the July 14. 1991, issue of Moscow News. When the first near-earth surveillance radars became available for tracking satellites, they were also used to survey space near the earth. The radar developers found that they could detect man-made satellites and also meteors without difficulty. They also found that: they could detect objects that were several hundred meters in size and traveling at speeds around 2O km./sec. (12,000 m.p.h.) at altitudes around 300 kilometers (190 miles) above the earth. They compiled a catalog of these unexpected objects and reported to the scientist in charge of the radar development. Evidently that scientist (Alexander Mints) was not surprised, saying that he had heard that Joseph Stalin was once interested in UFOs and asked a famous rocket scientist, Sergei Korolyov, to look into the matter. The interest of Stalin in UFOs was further clarifred in an article in the Workers' Tribune of August 13, 1991. This article was sent to me by Vladimir Azhazha. According to the newspaper, the source of the information is Professor Valeriy Burdakov, a scientist who works for the Scientific GeoInformation Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Both Koralyev and a close associate told Burdakov that Koralyev and several other leading scientists of the time were asked by Stalin to begin a study of "flying saucers" during the period of intense interest generated in June and July 1947 by the reports of such objects in the U.S. Stalin appears to have been especially interested in the July 8, 1947, report of a crashed saucer near Roswell, New Mexico. According to Burdakov, a special top secret study was carried out, and Koralyev concluded that the saucers were not weapons of the USA or any other country, that they seemed to pose no threat to the Soviet Union, and also that they were real. Koralyev advised Stalin that the phenomenon should be studied, and, in turn, was told by Stalin that his opinion was similar to others' whom the dictator had also tasked with the same problem. Koralyev did not know who the other experts were, although he speculated that two of them were full members of the Academy of Sciences who later became presidents of that body: Mstislav Keldysh and Alexander Topchiyev. The mention of Stalin's interest in the Roswell crash in recent Soviet reports is of particular interest because recent investigations strongly suggest that some alien craft crashed near Roswell in 1947, and the craft. along with the bodies, was quickly and very secretly retrieved by the U.S. military and shipped to an Army Air Force base, while the public was told that what had been found was only a weather balloon. Although U.S. press interest in the Roswell crash died quickly after the weather balloon "explanation," it appears from the recent Soviet revelations that Stalin was not deceived. If it is true that Stalin ordered his top scientists to study the UFO problem, and if it is true that they concluded UFOs are real, then one may expect that the Soviet government had an agency that might be called "MJ- 12-ski." the counterpart of the supposed "MJ-12" group that has been the subject of much heated discussion in the United States. It is clear that, if the Roswell crash actually happened (and an impressive amount of evidence indicates that it did - see, for example, Moore & Berlitz, The Roswell Incident; Schmitt & Randle, UFO Crash at Roswell; and Friedman & Berliner, Crash at Corona), then there was some U.S. government intelligence group that controlled access to the information. Whatever it was called, it had the duties of "MJ- 12" (MJ-12, by any other name, is still MJ-12!): The group had to control access to the hardware and related information; collect new information from the field; monitor events worldwide; prepare position papers and contingency papers for top-level government officials; and direct scientific studies of hardware, bodies, etc. Considering the concerted efforts at spying on our atomic bomb program that were carried out by Soviet agents at the time, and in the same area (White Sands, Los Alamos, Alamogordo - all within the same general area), it would not be too surprising if some Soviet agents had learned more about the Roswell incident at the time it happened than American civilians have been able to find out nearly a half-century later. Perhaps some reports of "MJ-12-ski" still exist buried in the archives of the KGB or some other Soviet intelligence organization. If so, it is amusing to contemplate the ironic possibility that we may learn more about the Roswell incident from files released during the present "housecleaning" of these agencies of the Soviet government than we have from our own! Unless, of course, MJ-12 gets there first! - Far-Out! Magazine, Summer '93, Vol. I, No. IV. (Larry Flynt publisher, William L. Moore Executive Editor, LFP, Inc., copyright 1993 by LFP, Inc.) ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************