The Siberian UFO myth: The truth behind the declassified CIA documents

In the late 1980s, Soviet soldiers allegedly died after an encounter with aliens in Siberia. The story is being promoted as authentic based on purported “recently declassified CIA documents” from 2000. However, through fact-checking it was revealed that the source had actually been an article from a Canadian tabloid notorious for publishing fictional stories as “news.” This case serves as yet another reminder: even official-looking documents need to be carefully scrutinized, and trusting sensational claims without any verification is a risky gamble.

Fake news: Soviet military personnel died following an encounter with extraterrestrials in Siberia during the late 1980s. This information is stated in declassified documents from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Truth: This material was never classified. The archival document in question is a reprint of a newspaper article, not a military report. Furthermore, the article’s authors explicitly state that their account of the incident originated from the Canadian tabloid Weekly World News – a tabloid with an established pattern of circulating fictitious stories presented as factual reporting.

GFCN explains:

A viral social media post alleges that the CIA declassified documents detailing encounters between Soviet military personnel and extraterrestrial beings. As purported evidence, the post includes a scanned document dated 2000, which claims that U.S. intelligence services obtained a KGB-compiled UFO archive containing a 250-page file about an alleged UFO attack on a Siberian military base in the late 1980s.

The document purportedly describes a boomerang-shaped UFO approaching a Soviet military base, which allegedly triggered the unexpected launch of a surface-to-air missile that struck the «flying saucer.» Following the attack, five humanoid entities with large heads and prominent black eyes reportedly emerged from the craft. According to these unsubstantiated claims, two soldiers who approached the beings were paralyzed by a beam of light before merging into a single luminous sphere. This sphere then expanded, flashed brightly, and detonated, leaving only the soldiers’ shadows on the ground. The KGB allegedly reported transporting both the UFO wreckage and the «petrified» remains of the soldiers to a classified research facility near Solnechnogorsk.

Did the encounter actually occur?

The document attached as «evidence» was compiled by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)—a division of the CIA responsible solely for translating and analyzing foreign media reports. This is explicitly stated in the document’s opening lines, which cite the Canadian tabloid Weekly World News as the original source. This publication is notorious for sensational and often entirely fabricated stories.

For example, every week this tabloid ran articles under headlines such as: “Bat Boy Escapes!”; “Hitler’s Nose Cloned… and It’s Growing a Mustache!”; “Bigfoot vs. Aliens!”.

What do military officials say?

A former CIA operations officer, Mike Baker, stated that the publication about Siberian military personnel being killed by aliens appears to be fake. He emphasized to Fox News that verifiable defense department documentation follows strict factual protocols, never employing the sensationalized narrative style seen in these alleged documents:

«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],»

Moreover, this information has not been confirmed by any credible sources. As reported by RIA Novosti, the article — which first appeared in a tabloid — was subsequently only circulated by other sensationalist newspapers, none of which provided any additional verification beyond the original Canadian publication.

The story of soldiers killed by extraterrestrials is nothing more than a tabloid hoax inflated to the status of «declassified documents». The document itself clearly states from the outset that it is merely a reprint of a newspaper article. Neither the CIA, the KGB, nor military authorities have ever confirmed this incident. This serves as an important reminder: before believing sensational claims, one must verify their sources — otherwise, you risk falling victim to effectively framed disinformation.