A declassified CIA file from the Cold War era that details a purported encounter between Soviet soldiers and a UFO in Ukraine has sparked intense interest online. It. The document was declassified in 2000 and initially reported by the Canadian Weekly World News and Ukrainian paper Holos Ukrayiny. The story remains popular among UFO enthusiasts and was even discussed on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.
According to the file, a platoon fired at a flying saucer, prompting the extraterrestrial passengers to retaliate and allegedly turn 23 soldiers into stone before fleeing the scene. The CIA obtained a 250-page KGB report on the incident after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, which includes eyewitness accounts and disturbing images of the aftermath, The New York Post reported.
The report describes the shocking transformation of the soldiers' living cells into a limestone-like substance, with one American agent characterising the scene as "a horrific picture of revenge on the part of extraterrestrial creatures." This incident is part of a larger collection of declassified CIA documents on UFOS, available through the agency's Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room.
According to the report, Soviet troops in Ukraine spotted a "low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer" during a training exercise. The situation escalated when one of the soldiers fired a surface-to-air missile, hitting the UFO and causing it to crash-land.
"It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with ‘large heads and large black eyes' emerged from it," the report claims. The surviving soldiers reported that after emerging from the wreckage, the extraterrestrial beings grouped and merged into a single, spherical object.
"In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into … stone poles. Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived,” the report states.
The KGB reportedly seized the petrified soldiers and the damaged spacecraft, transporting them to a secret base near Moscow. Soviet scientists discovered that an unknown light source had transformed the soldiers' living cells into a limestone-like substance.
"If the KGB file corresponds to reality, this is an extremely menacing case. The Aliens possess weapons and technology that go beyond all our assumptions. They can stand up for themselves if attacked," the CIA concluded.
Canadian Weekly World News estimates the supposed incident occurred between 1989 and 1990 and was initially published in 1993.
Former CIA agent Mike Baker expressed scepticism about the accuracy of the story to Fox News. He said, "If there was an incident, regardless of the nature of the incident, I suspect that the actual report doesn't look much like what has now come out from five or six or seven iterations of what originally was [written]."
