FBIS on the 1989 Soviet UFO wave
A US Foreign Broadcast Information Service press note of 22 November 1989 summarised a sudden flood of UFO reports in the Soviet press.
1989 CE · 55.76, 37.62 · status: official
The account
The note tracks coverage from July to November 1989. It covers Height 611 at Dalnegorsk and its metal-rich residues, a disc at a Dnepropetrovsk-region collective farm, and ground rings at Serpukhov and in Perm Oblast. It also reports TASS's account of a landing in Voronezh and a radar-invisible sphere over Omsk described by Maj. V. Loginov. New official bodies appeared, including a Moscow centre and an All-Union Commission chaired by Vladimir Azhazha. Scientists split. Academician Migulin and IZMIRAN's Yuri Platov said over 90% of reports had ordinary causes, and Krasnaya Zvezda compared the excitement to Orson Welles's 1938 broadcast. Others, such as V. Vysotskiy, called the Dalnegorsk material 'evidence of a high technology'.
The sceptical view
FBIS repeats press claims without evaluating them; several items, such as the aircrew injuries, rest on one informant's account.
Connections in the atlas
- Voronezh landing
- The Borisov aircrew and the beam of light
- Height 611 (Dalnegorsk)
- Soviet 'Setka' UFO research
- Petrozavodsk phenomenon