The Voronezh UFO Incident (1989)
On September 27, 1989, in Voronezh, USSR, children playing football in a park saw a red ball roughly three metres wide land nearby. A tall, three-eyed being wearing bronze-colored boots and a disk on its chest reportedly emerged, accompanied by a small robot. The children said a ray briefly made one of them disappear. The official TASS news agency reported the incident to the world on October 9, 1989.
Witnesses
Children, a police officer
Why it endures
One of the very few UFO cases officially relayed by a state news agency — a sign of the unprecedented openness of Soviet glasnost.
Official version (contested)
A police lieutenant confirmed seeing "a body flying in the sky," without further detail. No scientific explanation was ever accepted.