Russian UFOlogy (UFO Update, October 1993)
(Vol. 15, No. 11, p. 113)

Paul Stonehill was just eight years old when he met the retired pilot 
who would change his life. While flying over the Russian arctic, the 
pilot told Stonehill he had seen a disk-shaped craft following his 
plane so closely that his crew opened fire. Intrigued, the youngster 
began a lifelong quest to learn about UFOs, especially those sighted 
over his homeland of Kiev.  After emigrating to the United States as a 
teen, Stonehill kept in touch with other Russians interested in the 
Soviet-banned study of UFOlogy by smuggling messages through friends. 
Now a 34-year-old executive and naturalized U.S.citizen, Stonehill 
says his networking has put him in touch with scientists, military 
personnel, and UFO witnesses and investigators all over the former 
USSR. In fact, thanks to glasnost and his recently established Russian
UFOlogy Research Center in Tarzana, California, Stonehill now openly 
acts as liaison between UFOlogy contacts in Russia and the new 
Commonwealth of Independent States and counterparts in the United 
States. "I want to provide Americans with a true picture of UFOlogy in 
the former Soviet Union,"Stonehill comments, "and I want to help my 
Russian colleagues discern between tabloid UFOlogy and serious research.
"Toward that end, Stonehill reviews hundreds of Russian UFO cases a 
year,calling some 60 percent "genuine, backed by witnesses and hard 
facts."  In fact, piecing together information from his Russian 
contacts, Stonehill says he's come up with evidence that UFOlogy was a 
focus of the former Soviet regime.  For instance, when a large UFO 
allegedly plummeted to Earth outside the city of Omsk in the late 1980s,
the military reportedly moved the wreckage to Moscow. "Soviet academics 
have confirmed that it was taken to five secret state research sites," 
Stonehill insists. "My sources say the Soviet government conducted 
secret research based on the technology devised from this crash." 
Based on research by underground Soviet UFOlogists such as Anatoly 
Cistratav, Stonehill now also suspects there must have been some joint 
U.S.-Soviet programs aimed at developing the so-called Star Wars
technology.  Meanwhile, when it comes to fostering communication 
between Russian and American UFOlogists, Stonehill isn't alone. Former 
NASA experimental psychologist Richard Haines of Los Altos, California, 
recently founded the Joint USA-CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States)
Aerial Anomaly Federation.  The Federation, including more than 160 
groups throughout the United States and the former Soviet Union, will 
sponsor yearly meetings, translate UFO documents, and encourage 
collaborative scientific research into UFOs. Haines is also studying 
the difference between alien abductions reported in the United States 
and the former USSR. After hypnotizing a number of Russians in their 
native language, Haines has concluded that the "stories are basically
the same over there, except that Russians tend to describe aliens 
taller than those in the West.  "James Oberg, an expert on the Soviet 
space program and pundit on the UFO scene in the former USSR, however, 
takes a dim view of UFOlogy as practiced in Russia and the Commonwealth 
of Independent States.  "They're often weirder than the weirdest 
American group," he comments, "because they've been living in an 
information vacuum for so long.  "Stonehill, predictably, disagrees. 
Russian UFOlogists need help, not criticism, he states.  A case in 
point: Russian researchers don't even have access to equipment for 
analyzing a film purported to depict a UFO hovering near Odessa last 
year.  "Russian UFOlogists need state-of-the-art research tools," 
Stonehill concludes.  "They need more visits from their Western
colleagues and fewer debunkers on their backs."
--Sherry Baker Transmitted:  93-11-02 16:56:23 EST