UFO TIMES

READERS Write

An Exchange in Moscow

Dear Editor (Ken Phillips),

It was encouraging to see that the ITV "Network First" documentary about UFOs on Tuesday lOth Jan.'95 was not the usual lampooning or debunking exercise the British media has tended to indulge in for the past 40 odd years. I was impressed by the attempts of the producers to present a serious discussion on the real possibility that we have been, and are being, visited by strange flying craft of no known human origin.

(One wonders why there has been this apparent change in attitude on Ihe part of TV. Perhaps the reason is purely commercial (S'right - Ed. ). After all, one cannot afford to alienate a growing market of believers with the usual unreasoning debunkingl).

What was of particular interest to me was the TV programme's interviews with various Russian military personnel who were openly admitting that Ihe Soviet authorities had regarded lhe UFO phenomenon with deep concern, and were sympathetic to the ET hypothesis. This must have come as something of a shock to most British viewers who have, during the Cold War years, been fed on the idea that the Soviets were dull, grey and not given to Western, decadent, bourgeois, escapist nonsense. I have, however, one minor quibble with this programme's producer. It was suggested that it was only with the collapse of Communism could the suhject of UFOs be openly discussed in Russia. That was not my experience when I visited the former Soviet Union in May 1982.

I was there at the time when a new Cold War was heing intensified by Reagan and Thatcher, Brezhnev was still in power and Gorbachev was just a birthmark on the forehead, CND and the Greenham Women opposing cruise missiles were putting imminent nuclear holocaust back on the national agenda and the Falklands War was being fought in the South Atlantic, Given Western preconceptions,one would not expect to find in such a pre-Glasnost atmosphere a Russian who would be prepared to discuss UFOs! And yet in Moscow, I found such a person in my tour guide, George, whose hobbies were maths, physics and astronomy.

My photo of our tour guide, George, in Red Square, Moscow, back in the USSR, 1982.

To my surprise, he told me that UFOs (they're called NLOs in Russia) were a regular topic of interest in the Russian press, and that there had been a recent article on the Tunguska explosion of 1908 in which serious consideration had been given to the 'Crashed UFO Theory'. George was not ashamed to admit that he also held this theory. I asked George why he believed this. One of the reasons he gave was that he himself had seen UfOs on two occasions! I was astonished at the candour with which he described his sightings. Wasn't he worried about eaves-dropping KGB agents dragging him of to a Siberian psychiatric prison?

George, eye-witness to Russian jet fighter encounter with UFO

The most interesting experience was when he was a teenager, camping with a group of Young Pioneers in Northern Russia, beyond the Arctic Circle. He saw a large, metallic sphere suspended high in the sky. At first, he thought it was the Moon until he noticed that the object seemed to be rotating. Staring in admiration at this noiseless, hovering machine, he then assumed it was a new, top secret, Soviet aircraft. However, the noisy arrival of two Mig fighter planes soon dispelled such patriotic notions. As the Russian planes attempted to converge on the object, it sped away in the opposite direction and was soon gone from view. The Mig tighters had made a stab at giving chase, but gave up within seconds.

Since that time, George became a rapacious consumer of UFO articles. He did not think his interest was particularly unusual as he was certain that there were many thousands of Russians who, like himself believed in ET visitors.

Yours sincerely,
Nabil Shaban.

Ed's comment (Ken Phillips): Thank you Nabil for your account of meetng a UFO witness in Russia. Your letter demonstrates, of course, the now common knowledge that the UFO phenomenon crosses all known national. cultural and political frontiers .

Letter originally published in BUFORA's
UFO Times, issue no. 35 May/June 95

Have you had any UFO experiences you would like to tell me about? If so email me: jinghiz@msn.com

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