During the middle part of the 20th century UFO-mania gripped the US as reports of flying saucers, men in black and alien abductions filled newspaper pages. But as alien encounters became a sideshow in the states, their communist enemies were also being rocked by mysterious encounters with UFOs. Around the same time the Soviets also began to have increasing contact with apparent aliens and growing reports of spacecraft entering airspace over Russia.

Soviet UFO Files

Since some files comprising the famous Blue Folder (KGB agents were making records of UFO observations in special Blue Folder) have been declassified the prominent Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich got the folder from the KGB in 1991. The folder allegedly contained numerous descriptions of UFO flights and reports on some (mostly failed) attempts taken by the military in order to catch the aliens.

“It was a real breakthrough,” says Vladimir Azhazha, one of the leading UFOlogist in Russia in the 1990s and keeper of the Blue Folder. “The authorities not only acknowledged the existence of UFOs for the first time, they also showed their great interest in the issue,” adds he.

“We got hold of the Blue Folder only in 1991,” says Mr. Azhazha. “Pavel Popovich was given the folder after requesting reports on the cases of UFOs. I received the folder from Popovich, it was a 124-page compilation of reports about the encounters with UFOs. The reports filed by authorities, military units COs and eyewitnesses. It took us a long time to get rid of some doubts before making the folder public,” says he.

Pavel Popovich aboard Vostok 4

Ukrainian Cosmonaut

Pavel Popovich (5 October 1929- 30 September 2009), who has died following a brain haemorrhage aged 79, became, on 12 August 1962, the fourth cosmonaut to orbit the Earth, and the eighth person, and first Ukrainian, to be sent into space. Piloting the Vostok 4 capsule, he was also a man whose exploits – with his fellow cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev, on Vostok 3, which had been launched the day before – deeply discomforted the US.

After the Vostok 4 triumph, Popovich would not return to space for eight years. He worked as a senior cosmonaut instructor and was then chosen, in 1966, for the Soviet’s manned moon programme.

2012 stamp of Ukraine

In the late 1960s Popovich was detached from the moon programme and in 1972 he became head of cosmonaut training. Two years later he commanded his second and last space flight, the two-man Soyuz 14 mission to the Salyut 3 military space station, where he and Yuri Artyukhin spent a fortnight. Later in the 1970s he took a postgraduate science degree and became deputy chief of the Gagarin cosmonauts training centre.

UFO Encounters

Mr. Popovich personally claimed witnessing an UFO while flying in a passenger plane from Washington to Moscow. According to him, the object looked like a shining triangle that popped up out of nowhere, for awhile it flew near the plane at about 1,000 km per hour before vanishing without a trace.

Underwater alien bases

In 2006, Pavel Popovich gave an interview to Bul’var Gordona, a Ukrainian magazine. He said that the inhabitants of Phaeton or Moonah (an ancient planet with advanced civilization, believed to exist next to Earth ages ago, but perished due to nuclear explosions) probably visit Earth from time to time.

The visitors’ intermediate base is located in the area of Saturn, and they have three bases on Earth. One of them is in the Andes, the other in the Indian Ocean trench, and the third one is located in the Himalayas, the famous Shambhala. The base in the Andes they liquidated because human civilization came too close. But they do have an underwater base at the bottom of the Indian Ocean trench.

A little more than 6 miles off the coast of Point Dume in Malibu, California, an unusual-looking structure sits on the sea bed floor. Based on images obtained on Google Earth, the oval-shaped object has a huge flat top and what appear to be pillars or columns that seem to reveal the entrance to a darker, inner place. ( Image Source

The records dating back to soviet times were compiled by a special navy group collecting reports of unexplained incidents delivered by submarines and military ships. The group was headed by deputy Navy commander Admiral Nikolay Smirnov, and the documents reveal numerous cases of possible UFO encounters, Svobodnaya Pressa news website says.

Vladimir Azhazha, former navy officer and a famous Russian UFO researcher, says the materials are of great value.

“Fifty percent of UFO encounters are connected with oceans. Fifteen more – with lakes. So UFOs tend to stick to the water,” he said. On one occasion a nuclear submarine, which was on a combat mission in the Pacific Ocean, detected six unknown objects. After the crew failed to leave behind their pursuers by maneuvering, the captain ordered to surface. The objects followed suit, took to the air, and flew away. Many mysterious events happened in the region of Bermuda Triangle, recalls retired submarine commander Rear Admiral Yury Beketov. Instruments malfunctioned with no apparent reason or detected strong interference. The former navy officer says this could be deliberate disruption by UFOs.

Revelations

In the same interview with Bul’var Gordona Popovich was asked whether he, a pilot and cosmonaut who grew up in the atheistic (sometimes, militantly so) society, believed in God.

He replied that he was baptized. And in 1974, during his spaceflight he understood that there is someone who had created stars outside the spacecraft’s porthole, the Moon, and other planets. When one sees this, one understands how infinite everything is. Popovich recalled thinking: “someone had created it, and someone directs it all”. Who has created the laws of celestial mechanics? All we did was to use them, to discern them, to explain them. That is why he thought about God. No matter what one calls him, there is the Creator who has created everything.

Marina Popovich

Pavel Romanovich Popovich’s wife, Marina Popovich was a test pilot, living in Star City and flying the full Soviet aircraft inventory from AN-22 transports to supersonic MIG-21s. She holds 90 flight records and has been billed as “the Chuck Yeager of the Soviet Union.” She is a retired Soviet Air Force Colonel, engineer and a test pilot who held around 107 aviation world records set on over 40 types of aircraft.

The legendary airwoman, Marina Popovich, who set 101 world records, has published a new book titled “I am a Pilot”

She shared her personal experiences with UFOs and her knowledge of the extraterrestrial presence in her book titled UFO Glasnost (published in 2003 in Germany) as well as public lectures and interviews.