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.)



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