Documents / Report
This 22 November 1989 media survey, titled USSR: Media Report Multitude of UFO Sightings, reviews Soviet newspaper and journal coverage of UFO reports during 1989. It covers the Dalnegorsk Hill 611 crash debris studies, landings reported at Voronezh, Surgut and Perm Oblast, an aircraft encounter over Borisov, and an Omsk sighting described by Maj V. Loginov. It also notes that a permanent UFO study center opened in Moscow and sets out skeptics' explanations, including rocket launches, ball lightning and mass hysteria.
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22 November 1989 ## USSR: MEDIA REPORT MULTITUDE OF UFO SIGHTINGS Leading Soviet newspapers and journals have recently begun publishing an increasing number of articles and news reports on sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in various areas of the Soviet Union. A "permanent center" for the study of UFOs has been established in Moscow to conduct research and support the investigation of reported sightings. ## ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★ Setting the tone for this media coverage was an article in the 9 July 1989 SOTSIALISTICHESKAYA INDUSTRIYA, which referred to many recent reports of UFO sightings in the USSR. Interviewed by the paper, P. Prokopenko, director of a laboratory for the study of "anomalous phenomena," stated that a "permanent center" for the study of UFOs is being established in the Soviet Union. In addition to conducting research and presenting lectures on UFOs, the center will support the investigation of reported sightings. In referring to an issue of the paper published in July 1988 that included a report on "an amazing event that took place on Hill 611 near the village of Dalnegorsk in Primorskiy Kray," the article noted that the event is still under investigation. Many observers saw a flying sphere crash into one of the hill's twin peaks, and physicists and other scientists from the Siberian Division of the USSR Academy of Sciences are still studying the "fine mesh," "small spherical objects," and "pieces of glass" that are considered to be small remnants left behind by the sphere. According to the article, the alleged spacecraft was nearly obliterated in the crash, but there appears to be enough material at the site for the scientists--a mixture of UFO "enthusiasts" and skeptics--to eventually "penetrate this mystery." In studying the site, scientist A. Makeyev reported finding gold, silver, nickel, alpha-titanium, molybdenum, and compounds of beryllium. One of the "skeptical" physicists from Tomsk has hypothesized that the so-called sphere could have been some kind of a "plasmoid," formed by the "interaction of geophysical force fields," which captured the elements found by Makeyev from the atmosphere on its trajectory toward disintegration on the hilltop. Other researchers have generally rejected this explanation since the amounts of various types of metals found at the site would imply, according to this "plasmoid" theory, that "the concentration of metals in the atmosphere should exceed the present level by a factor of 4,000."
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