The KGB Blue Folder: Mineralnye Vody Airliner Sightings

On 24 October 1991 the KGB sent pilot-cosmonaut Pavel Popovich a package of 124 printed pages, under cover letter ref. 1953/III. It held about 18 reports from 1982 to 1990, mostly from military or strategic sites. It became known as the Blue Folder. One of its cases began at the airport dispatch centre in Mineralnye Vody. Even the date is contested. The Russian-language sources, Komsomolskaya Pravda in February 2003 and Anton Pervushin's book, give 15 October 1987, while later English retellings give 15 December 1987.

23:10. At Nevinnomyssk traffic police post No. 1, Senior Sergeant Titarenko saw a fiery trail flying over from the direction of Cherkessk. It was about 5 to 6 metres high and 20 to 30 metres long. "There was no sound at all," he reported. The driver of a Moskvich car saw it too.

23:15. Aircraft 65798, flying flight 6808 from Volgograd to Tbilisi, was near Nalchik. The crew radioed the dispatchers. They described "a flying object resembling an aeroplane with its landing lights extended and switched on," approaching on a head-on course. They stayed in contact about it for 10 to 15 minutes. Radar searched the airspace in all operating modes. It found nothing.

About 23:20. A second crew, aircraft 65139 on flight 6352, saw an object similar to an aeroplane. Behind it streamed "a long fiery trail scattering sparks." Then both crews reported the same ending. The object ceased to exist after a flash resembling an explosion, "which, however, was not accompanied by any sound."

In Stavropol, a resident and Irina Vladimirovna Komarova watched a lighted object moving parallel to Dovatortsev Street. Its outline and arrangement of lights resembled a Tu-154, but the statement described a grey, cigar-like hull with four lights. The light formed a regular pointed cone. The witness estimated the object at about 50 metres up and said it moved smoothly. "The object moved silently, which is unlike an aircraft."

Lieutenant Varyutin, patrolling with Sergeant Radchenko and Lieutenant Roman, watched it too. In all, five militia patrols filed reports. Petrol-station operator Garin Khachaturovich Akopyan, 44, gave a statement of his own. At 23:30 a villager reported a burning plane flying over his village. A search found no wreckage.

The KGB gathered the signed statements. Pravda.ru later wrote that "KGB agents looked high and low trying to figure out what happened". No conclusion was recorded. Pervushin put it plainly: "What was it? No analysis, no answer..."

The folder's own journey is murky. When the request was repeated in October 1993, the KGB replied that the pages had gone by registered mail in 1991 and had since disappeared. A Swedish journalist allegedly bought the folder for 500 German marks. In 1997 ufologist Mikhail Gershtein obtained copies stamped for delivery only to "P.R. Popovich", which was taken as a sign they were genuine.

No source offers a conventional answer. A sparking trail, a silent final flash and an empty radar screen fit the pattern of a bright bolide or re-entering space debris. Yet no matching re-entry has been found for either date. And a silent grey hull gliding 50 metres above a city street is hard to square with a meteor. Night witnesses often misjudge height and distance, so neither side can claim the point.

The Mineralnye Vody reports sit beside other Blue Folder cases, from a domed disc over Kapustin Yar in 1989 to a radar target at Tiksi in 1987. Damn Interesting later called the collection the Russian 'Blue Book'. Two airliner crews. Five militia patrols. One silent flash. No answer.