NIKOLAI LEBEDEV
Nikolai Lebedev was born in Valday, U. S.S.R. , in 1950. He studied at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad, 1968-75, at the same time studying developments in aeronautics and astronautics. He now specializes in irrigation engineering and lives in Leningrad, where I had the pleasure of meeting him in January 1989.
His interest in UFOs was stimulated in 1983 , when he read a book about unexplained mysteries by Helmut Hoflung.
I am indebted to Cyril Darbyshire for translating the majority of the following reports, which are mainly from the Dalnegorsk, Dalniy Vostok area (on the East coast). I have also made use of material supplied to me in English by Mr. Lebedev, including some sketches.
Reports of Unidentified Flying Object: The Soviet Scene 1988 – Sightings in Dalnegorsk, Dalniy Vostok
Liudmila Moxunova, hostel manager 2/12/88
“On February 12, 1988, I was walking home from the shop at 8:00 p.m. , along with other women carrying their shopping, when I saw a big yellow sphere, half as large as the moon , and after it followed a smaller one, keeping pace with the larger one.
“The spheres moved slowly from Svetliy Klyuch, then stopped and remained stationary for several minutes. In side the spheres you could make out a sort of unevenly spun network. There was no sound and the intensity of the light did not change. The spheres were traveling 300-400 meters above the hills and were identical in color.
“From the big sphere came rays as if from the sun, but there were none from the other one. The length of the rays was such that they seemed to reach the roofs of the buildings, their color identical with that of the spheres. The distance between them was about ten or twelve meters, and movement was from west to east. ”
Vitya Zinchenko, School No. 21, 7th Class 3/14/88
“On March 14, 1988, a large sphere a quarter the size of the full moon flew straight through the village, in the direction of Goreloe. When it was approximately in the center of the village, a dark pink sphere of smaller dimensions split off from it and flew off to the north. There was no noise during its flight and its color changed at regular intervals from fully white to having a gray sphere in its center. “
3/18/88
Black-and-white photos were taken at 20:45-20:51 hrs of a large glowing sphere with a trail in the Beriozovsky area between Yugo-Aieksandrovka and Bolshaya Zlatogorka.
The photos were analyzed at the Geographic Institute of Dalniy Vostok with a French computer, and showed the object to be solid.
Alexei Rodion, School No. 10, 3rd Class 5/1/88
“On May I , 1988, at 6:00 p.m. I was mending my motorcycle in the garage on Engineer Street. There weren’t yet any stars in the sky. I saw a high-flying sphere, orange in color, about one-sixth the size of the full moon. When it had flown approximately to the center of the village it stopped and hung for five or six seconds, then turned off sharply at an angle of 90°, heading in the direction of the chemical factory. “
V. Pavlov, computer engineer 5/7/88
“On May 7, 1988, I was returning home from the garage, and at 10:30 p.m. saw a bluish sphere at a height of 600 or 700 meters, making no sound and with a dove-colored trail behind it, flying parallel to the Earth. It was flying to the south-west, intersecting the center of the village. The length of the trail was about 200 meters. In certain defined sections it flared brightly, in pulses. When it reached the approximate vicinity of Sakharnaya it again flared and I didn’t see it anymore, possibly because of a change in course or because of the distance between us. “
Observation by A. Ya. over Partizanskii 7/25/88
“A large sphere-shaped object went by at 11 :09 p.m. , one sixth of the full moon, lower than the clouds, at about 3,000 to 5,000 meters altitude, at a speed half that of a jet. The intensity of illumination became extremely strong. “
8/25/88
On this day there were three reports of sightings.
I. Yu. Sleptsova
“We had returned from the cinema with the girls at 11 :00 p.m. and were in our room when we saw a hemisphere of dull white rise · from behind the house opposite. It was foggy, like a cloud, and close to the Great Bear. It began to grow, then from the hemisphere came a ray of the same color-long, narrow, and steady. We watched all this for about two hours. “
G. B. Karandashov, veterinary surgeon
“On August 25, I was on a business trip and was returning by official car from Vladivostok, together with a chauffeur. There was a bright moon to the right. To the left hung a huge sphere ten times larger than the full moon. It hung there motionless, dull and dense, with round, even edges. It was slightly paler than the moon .
Then it began to grow, touched the Earth and quickly began to grow until it was the size of the firmament. Then, just as quickly, it dispersed, melting away like a rainbow. Above the Earth where the sphere had been, a black body seemed to be suspended. We watched all this for three minutes, as did people from a service bus standing beside us . “
Yu. Grankin, head of a photographic laboratory
“On August 25, 1988, my wife and I were at our datcha when at 11 :08 p.m. we saw a huge sphere, six or seven times bigger than the moon, flying across the forest and the taiga from the direction of Krasnorechen, toward Dal negorsk. There was no sound. It approached at a tremendous speed, during which time we noticed that it was spinning and there were spots on it, but I couldn’t make out what sort of spots . . . . Then it began to go down behind the hill not far from Dalnegorsk, and began to spread very quickly. . . . The sky was black, but where the sphere had gone down it was milky-white. My wife and I were very frightened, thinking it was a nuclear ex plosion”
[These three sightings seem to me to be more probably due to Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) tests, or barium gas experiments, but Nikolai Lebedev is sure they were not-Editor.]
Pavlik Pavlov (graduated from the 10th Class, 1988) 8/27/88
“On August 27 , at 10:43 p. m . , as I was getting off a bus in the center of Dalnegorsk, I saw a large sphere descending just above the Party Committee building, white, yellow, and orange in color. Its size was approximately one-fifth of the full moon. It hung for a short while over Dalnegorsk, then moved off in the direction of the quarry.
I watched it for two or three seconds. Its speed was about 80 k.p.h. As it moved it emitted several bright flashes, as if at one-second pulses”
Workers from the Automatic Telephone Exchange, Anuchino 9/4/88
“On September 4, at 11 : 15 p.m. a triangular-shaped object, a quarter the size of the full moon, was observed hovering near the village. It shone brightly and hung there for twenty minutes. We saw the same sort of object over the same place on another occasion . ” (Figure 6:1)
Pasha Gladkov, School No. 4, 9th Class 9/15/88
“On September 15, between 8: 10 and 9:00 p.m. , my friends and I were at a little shop not far from the ‘Khimik’ cultural center, talking among ourselves, when we suddenly saw an object, disk- or plate-shaped, flying slowly and evenly from the direction of Lyubov hill. Round and fiat, it shone brightly. Its height was 400 or 500 meters as it flew low between the hills. Behind it came a shining whitish trail some tens of meters long, and fading away. When it had completed a half-circle it passed over the hill where the road runs to Nikolaeskiy. It hung there for about a minute, and after hovering for a while over the north-western slope, disappeared behind the hill in the direction of the chemical works. In all, we observed it for three to four minutes. “
I. A. Sabanin, cinema mechanic 9/16/88
“On September 16, I was in a fishing-boat on the River Listvenno together with my friend V.I: Pristavko, in the Ternevskiy region. At 9: 15 p.m. we both saw an unusual phenomenon which we watched for between forty seconds and a minute: a series of bright, fluorescent dashes flying in one group with a diameter of five meters, parallel with each other, dying out and lighting up at strictly defined intervals like tracer bullets, at a height of about 3 ,000 meters and an angle of incline to the Earth of 20°. They were flying in the direction of Dalnegorsk from north-east to south-west. “
At the same time, Sabanin’s wife Elvira observed a large cylindrical object flying from the direction of the sea, from the TV tower to the north, towards Upper Rudnik. It was about 200 to 250 meters long, and shining brightly, with a glowing trail .
V. F. Morozov, worker 9/24/88
“On September 24, I came out of my house into the street in order to bring our Siamese cat home. It was about 8:00 p.m. but not quite dark yet. I looked at the sky over the Bruderovskiy Raspadok and saw something quite incomprehensible-a fiery body of cylindrical shape was flying past, leaving a stripy white trail behind it. It was flying in a horizontal position.
The body was unlike any airplane, and it was about 400 meters long. There was no sound. It was not flying very high-just below the hilltops, and it was flying in the direction of the hill where an object had fallen on January 29, 1986. “
A group of children from School No. 27, 7th Class 9/25/88
During the holidays a group of schoolchildren on Lake Dukhovo saw a ring-shaped light, yellowish-red in color, hanging motionless over the mountainous area on the mainland side nearer to Dalnegorsk. The time was 4:00 a.m. According to the witnesses, the ring-shaped light had a shining object in the center. A few minutes later the ring dispersed and the shining object began to make agitated movements in a circle.
From IZVESTIYA 9/18/88
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE HEAVENS?
In Japan last Friday, from 6:30 p.m. onwards, tele phones at police stations and observatories were over whelmed with calls from people reporting that they had witnessed a unique phenomenon; a huge fiery sphere, several times larger than the full moon, flew over the largest Japanese island Honshu from north to south-east at the speed of a jet-plane, without leaving any traces on radar screens.
In various parts of the island descriptions of the un known object varied: different colors were named (ranging from milky-white to orange and gold), different time parameters (visibility of the UFO was from 2-3 to 40 seconds). At the same time it remained apparent that the heavenly newcomer could not have been imagined by dozens of people simultaneously. Consequently, something really is happening in the heavens . . .
There is no doubt in my mind that the same object flew over the territories of both the Soviet Union and Japan, making several landings in remote, unpopulated regions of the USSR. Unfortunately, no landing traces have been discovered, on account of heavy rain and the subsequent fall of leaves.
