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1984 · Borisoglebsk aviation hub, Voronezh oblast (Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots)

The Borisoglebsk air crashes

Sourced, unconfirmed
Strength C · 5/10 · 2 independent
Evidence 1/4 · Witnesses 2/3 · Backing 2/3

The Soviet programme itself records radar and visual contacts tied to air accidents and leaves them unexplained; no dates, aircraft or names are public.

Plausibility High
Score 14 · 8 factors for, 0 against

The Soviet UFO program's own coordinators record radar and visual contacts tied to air accidents and leave them unexplained.

See the factors ↓

Unidentified
From Platov and Sokolov's account of the Borisoglebsk pilot-school accidents, 1984-87, in some of which an unknown object was on the airfield radar. · Illustration for uaptrail.com
When1984 – 1987
WhereBorisoglebsk aviation hub, Voronezh oblast (Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots)
Backing2 independent
Evidencedocuments

Between 1984 and 1987 the Borisoglebsk pilot school in Voronezh oblast lost aircraft in a series of accidents. In some of them an unknown object was on the airfield radar and was seen by pilots in the accident zone, and the school's commander asked for the Soviet UAP programme's specialists to join the state accident commissions. In 2000 the programme's coordinators wrote that there was still no agreed explanation: they class the events as unidentified.

Evidence, in date order (2)

  1. 2000Platov & Sokolov (2000)document
    one of only two urgent programme investigations they describe, and the only one left unexplained Platov & Sokolov, 'The study of UFOs in the USSR' (Vestnik RAN, 2000)
  2. 2013R.P. Oleksiuk (2013)document
    repeats it in the NAS of Ukraine's journal Космічна наука і технологія 2013

How plausible · High

The Soviet UFO program's own coordinators record radar and visual contacts tied to air accidents and leave them unexplained.

  • ●●
    Access Airfield radar and pilots; the program's coordinators.
  • ●●
    No gain sought Official program record.
  • ●●
    Restraint Left "unidentified".
  • ●●
    Character record Program coordinators Platov and Sokolov.
  • ●●
    Fits the documented skeleton The Soviet state UFO program is documented.
  • ●●
    Physical traces or official reaction Radar contacts and air accidents.

Plausibility weighs how well an account fits where secrecy hides the documents by design, so missing records never count against it. Strength measures what is documented. Assessed 2026-10-23.

Claims

In a series of air accidents, an unknown object was present on airfield radar screens and seen by some pilots in the accident zones; the school commander asked that UFO specialists join the state accident commissions. 'There is still no single opinion… we will consider these events unidentified.'firsthandOn the recordperson/yuliy-platov and person/boris-sokolov

Where

Borisoglebsk aviation hub, Voronezh oblast (Borisoglebsk Higher Military Aviation School of Pilots)
51.4°N 42.1°E

In The picture

On the recordThe firmest layer is the one trained observers and instruments wrote down. Belgian gendarmes watched silent lit triangles in 1989-90 and ground radars tracked the wave; the Air Force sent F-16s and released its own data, though a radar study it released in 2025 puts the fighters' lock-ons down to their tracking softw…

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