UPDATE: Several helpful Sideshow readers have written in with various explanations of the object. As we noted in the post, it's mostly likely a monitoring device used by journalists. One reader speculated the object is a modified, do-it-yourself "ArduCopter," while another sent in this photo.

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Some 25,000 pro-democracy protesters in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square had an unexpected participant in their demonstrations on Saturday when a UFO was spotted hovering above the crowd.

Here is a somewhat blurry video capture of the scene, taken by a person in the crowd:

Several demonstrators in the crowd espied the hovering object, with reflecting blue and red lights. Descriptions of the object--which observers say was definitely not a helicopter--included "five extended tendrils or pylons emanating from the body of the vehicle."

But just because it was a UFO, doesn't mean it was extraterrestrial.

The UFO was in sight long enough for some protesters to climb trees for a closer look. Russian news site RT.com's Vitaliy Matveev disputes the UFO theory, saying the object was at worst, a Russian government spy drone or simply a news media camera filming the protests:

Well, being among those tens of thousands of "confused onlookers", the only kind of debate I can recall in regards to the "object" was whether it was the police monitoring the security situation on the scene of mass protests through a drone camera or journalists taking aerial photos for their reports (or broadcasts). Despite standing quite far from the place above which the drone was hovering, I could still clearly see what it was, and so could the others. Needless to say, nobody was really "distracted by the UFO," as MailOnline assumes, provided more important distractions were unfolding on the ground.

On the other hand, wouldn't the aliens want the crowds below to be distracted by earthly political conflicts as the space craft hatched bigger plans for Planet Earth? We're just saying. . . .

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