(USO = unidentified submersible object)
The secret files of the Soviet Navy contain much valuable information about UFO and USO sightings. Soviet military researchers had been quite thorough. The files have been largely inaccessible, even after the fall of the USSR. But I was able to collect some interesting information through the years of research, and help of my colleagues in the former Soviet Union, modern Russia, Ukraine, and other newly independent countries.
In the summer of 1982 Mark Shteynberg (along with Lt. Colonel Gennady Zverev) were conducting periodic training of the reconnaissance divers (‘frogmen’) of the Turkestan and Central Asian military regions. The training exercises had been taking place at the Issik Kul Lake, a deep water lake in the Transiliysk Ala Tau area.
Quite unexpectedly, the officers were paid a visit by a very important official, Major-General V. Demyanko, Commander of the Military Diver Service of the Engineer Forces of the Ministry of Defense, USSR. He arrived to inform the local officers of an extraordinary event that had occurred during similar training exercises in the Trans-Baikal and West Siberian military regions. There, during their military training dives, the frogmen had encountered mysterious underwater ‘swimmers’, very human-like, but huge in size (almost three meters in height!)
The swimmers were clad in tight-fitting silvery suits, despite icy-cold water temperatures. At the depth of fifty meters, these ‘swimmers’ had neither scuba diving equipment (aqualungs), nor any other equipment… only sphere-like helmets concealing their heads.
Well, the local military commander (quite alarmed by such encounters) decided to capture one of the creatures. With that purpose in mind, a special group of seven divers, under the command of an officer, had been dispatched.
As the frogmen tried to cover the creature with a net, the entire group was thrown out of the deep waters to the surface by some powerful force. Now, because autonomous equipment of the frogmen does not allow surfacing from such depths without strict adherence to the process of decompression stops, all of the members of the ill-fated expedition were stricken by aeroembolism, or the Caisson disease. The only remedial treatment available consisted of an immediate confinement under decompression conditions in a pressure chamber. They had several such pressure chambers in the military region, but only one in working condition. It could contain no more than two persons.
Hence, local CO had forced four frogmen into the chamber. As a result, three of them (including the leader of the group) perished, and the rest became invalids - terrible consequences caused by the usual Soviet military bungling.
The Major-General rushed to the Issik Kul to warn the local military against similar ‘devil-may-care’ actions. Although the Issik Kul Lake is shallower than the Baikal Lake, the depth of the former was sufficient to contain similar mysterious creatures. Did the major-general know something that Officer Shteynberg did not?
A short time later, the staff headquarters of the Turkmenistan military region had received an order from the Commander-in-Chief of the Land Forces. The order consisted of detailed analysis of the Baikal Lake events and reprimands. It was supplemented by an information bulletin from the headquarters of the Engineer Forces of the Ministry of Defense, USSR. The bulletin listed numerous deepwater lakes where there had been registered sightings of anomalous phenomena: appearances of underwater creatures analogous to the Baikal type, descent and surfacing of giant discs and spheres, powerful luminescence emanating from the deep, etc.
Such documents, without exception, were highly classified and “for the eyes" of a very limited circle of military officers. The purpose for such documents was "to prevent unnecessary encounters...."
The territory under the military unit jurisdiction where Shteynberg served had an anomalous water reservoir, the Sarez Lake (in the Pamir area). It was roughly a kilometer and a half deep. Sarez is visible to those stationed at a ‘tracking point’ in the Pamir Mountains (the ‘tracking’ is of American SDI satellites by Soviets). Super-powerful instruments, equipment and devices of the Soviet military sub-unit (that had been doing the actual ‘tracking’) had repeatedly registered submersion into Sarez of disc-like objects, their surfacing and subsequent lift-off.
The files of the Russian Ufology Research Center contain much more information about Russian underwater sightings, including statements of Navy officers and intelligence operatives. It is safe to conclude that the Soviets (before 1991), and the Russians (now) are preoccupied with the strange and sinister creatures lurking in their waters.
Author D. Povaliyayev was hang-gliding over Kavgolov (Leningrad area) in the early 1990's. There are lakes, and in one of them the skydiver noticed three giant ‘fish’. He descended, and was able to discern ‘swimmers’ in silvery costumes. He mentioned the episode in his book Letuchi Gollandets (1995). There have been many UFO sightings in the area.
Source: Report courtesy of UK author & researcher Paul Stonehill
|