A Russian ufologist with the Russian Geographical Society, Mikhail Gershtein turns up in Soviet cases as the researcher who checked the details. At Dalnegorsk's Height 611 in 1986, he backed the drifting reconnaissance balloon theory. He argued that 15 m/s was a typical wind at that height. He reported that the lead found at the site matched the Kholodnoe deposit in Siberia. With Manuel Borraz, he later linked a separate wave of sightings on 28 November 1987 to the re-entry of a Proton third stage. In 1997 he obtained copies of the KGB Blue Folder on the Mineralnye Vody airliner sightings.
Stories3
Chair of the Russian Geographical Society's UFO commission, backed the balloon explanation
Researcher who linked the lead to a Siberian deposit and the 1987 wave to a Proton stage
Ufologist who obtained copies of the folder in 1997