Russia (USSR) · 20 September 1977

Petrozavodsk, 1977

Documented

The event that caused a superpower to start a state UFO programme: within weeks the Academy president asked the Military-Industrial Commission to act, and SETKA was written into the 1978 defence research plan and ran thirteen years.

Where
Petrozavodsk, Karelian ASSR
When
20 September 1977
Who reported it
Mass mixed-official: ambulance crew, militia officers, port sailors and dockers, servicemen, airport personnel
Entities described
None reported
Handled as
INVESTIGATED / EXPLAINED
Evidence class
GOV-1

The record

An official file preserves that a report was made and examined. It does not, by itself, establish what was seen.

The document is attached to this entry.

What is not settled

The programme's own directors identify it as the gas-and-dust plume of the Kosmos-955 launch from Plesetsk that morning, lit by the sun above the terminator. An actual Soviet military report exists only as described by Platov and Sokolov; no primary 1977 file is published.

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