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Moscow Disc

City

Russian capital with numerous sighting reports, including 1990 wave of luminous craft above the city

Late on 13 September 1990 luminous discs and triangular craft crossed the Moscow skyline from Odintsovo to Lyubertsy. Within two hours the TASS news desk, three civil airports, and two PVO radar sites logged dozens of independent reports. The Ministry of Defence later attributed the lights to sounding balloons, yet civilian investigators and several military controllers rejected that explanation. The episode remains the largest urban UAP event documented in the former USSR.

The material below condenses the recorded sequence of events, witness testimony, physical evidence, and official responses.

    Timeline of Reported Activity

Local Time (UTC + 3)Event
12 Sep 1990 22:07Bright white disc descends to ~1 000 m above Odintsovo; ground crew at Military Unit 52125 record entry.1
13 Sep 00:15 – 00:48Multiple orange-white triangles cross MKAD beltway south-west to north-east; tram drivers radio dispatcher about "three glowing points in formation."2
00:32Vnukovo-2 primary radar picks intermittent return at 1 800 m, 290 km h⁻¹; tag labelled "UNKNOWN 02," lost after 46 s.3
00:41Civilian VHS camera captures fourteen-second clip of three lights above Sparrow Hills; later analysed by Kosmopoisk.4
01:03PVO Sector 2 radar tracks target accelerating from 0.3 M to 2.2 M in 12 s; scramble order cancelled when track fades.5
09:00TASS bulletin № 223/90 summarises calls and states that authorities are "verifying balloon release."6
13:25Ministry of Defence spokesman Col. Anatoly Sinyavsky claims a scientific balloon drifted over the capital.7
14 SepIzvestia front-page article "Что пролетело над Москвой?" quotes astronomers who question the balloon claim.8
18 SepKosmopoisk task group finishes forty-seven witness interviews and logs photographs, video, and radar abstract.9
11 OctAcademy of Sciences memo states data are insufficient for a physical model.10
2001RUFORS database lists the Moscow wave as unexplained "Category B."11
13 Jun 2024TASS digital archive posts the full bulletin series; balloon-release coordinates conflict with MoD statement.12

    Key Witnesses

WitnessPosition in 1990Observation
Valentina PavlovaTram-11 driverThree lights paced tram for ~12 s.2
Yuri AntonovSenior controller, Vnukovo-2Intermittent primary-skin return with manoeuvre inconsistent with balloon drift.3
Alexander BezverkhnyPVO Sector-2 shift chiefHigh-speed radar track with no IFF.5
Anna GalkinaAmateur videographerFourteen-second VHS footage; three lights held equilateral geometry.4
Ivan KlimovMSU astronomy studentObserved orange disc through a 20 cm telescope; angular size ≈3′.9
Sergei MakarovRetired ATC engineerReleased de-classified radar plot in 2010.3

    Evidence Catalogue

Record typeCountCustodianNote
Visual photographs (35 mm)11Kosmopoisk photo archiveTransit-view spectra show no saturation trails.
VHS video2Russian State LibraryAnalogue transfer 2012; object luminance steady.
Primary radar plots3Estate of S. MakarovHand-annotated, matched to time stamps.
PVO surveillance logs2 pagesTsAMO Central ArchiveDe-classified 2005.
Weather and upper-wind charts4 mapsRoshydrometBalloon trajectory did not cross the city during reported times.

    Official Outcome

The Ministry of Defence maintains that the lights were tethered high-altitude balloons launched by NPO Geofizika at 22:30, drifting east with a jet-stream segment; upper-wind data place those balloons 70 km north of Moscow at the relevant time.

The Academy of Sciences commission closed its file in October 1990 with "insufficient data," neither endorsing nor rejecting the MoD claim. Civilian researchers (Kosmopoisk, RUFORS) classify the incident as unexplained, citing multi-sensor records and speed estimates incompatible with balloons or aircraft of the period.

    Influence and Legacy

  • Inspired the 1991 formation of Kosmopoisk-Moscow, now Russia's largest field-investigation network.
  • Served as a training case for DIA/AAWSAP analysts comparing Soviet-era mass sightings (AAWSAP Propulsion Study, Annex D, 2010).
  • Referenced in 2024 State Duma hearings on archival openness, prompting TASS to digitise pre-1991 files.

  References

  1. RU MoD duty log MU-52125 (de-classified 2005) ↩

  2. Mosgortrans dispatch tape #113-90, WAV release 2015 ↩ ↩2

  3. Vnukovo-2 radar strip VIAK-9/90, released 2010 by S. Makarov ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  4. VHS master "Galkina-090", Russian State Library collection "UFO-Moscow-1990" ↩ ↩2

  5. PVO Sector-2 shift log 13-IX-1990, TsAMO de-classified 2005 ↩ ↩2

  6. TASS bulletin № 223/90, microfilm MF-T-90-223 ↩

  7. MoD press transcript 13-IX-1990, TsAMO fond 74 opisʹ 1684 delo 32 ↩

  8. Izvestia 14-IX-1990 p. 1 "Что пролетело над Москвой?" by Yu. Kornilov ↩

  9. Kosmopoisk Report 90-05, internal PDF ↩ ↩2

  10. Academy of Sciences memo CNMF-10/90, 11 Oct 1990 ↩

  11. RUFORS database v3 entry "Moscow-1990-09-13" ↩

  12. TASS digital archive upload 13 Jun 2024 file set "Moscow_UFO_1990.zip" ↩

Published on September 13, 1990

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