--- title: USSR Soviet State Media UFO Report: The Real Reason Behind the News description: They had small heads and wore silver overalls, apparently canonical: https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-09T11:00:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:37:07.136Z article:section: History og:title: Aliens landed in Russia, according to official Soviet Media. Here's the backstory og:description: They had small heads and wore silver overalls, apparently og:url: https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Aliens landed in Russia, according to official Soviet Media. Here's the backstory twitter:description: They had small heads and wore silver overalls, apparently twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why 'Aliens' 'Landed' in Russia 25 Years Ago  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 9, 2014 11:00 AM UTC  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Oct 9, 2014 11:00 AM UTC Extra-terrestrial contact has already been made — at least if you believe a report that ran 25 years ago Thursday, on Oct. 9, 1989, in the Soviet press agency TASS. On Sept. 27 of that year, according to the official report, tall three-eyed aliens with small heads showed up in the city of Voronezh, arriving in a shiny ball (or, alternatively, a “banana-shaped” object) and bringing with them their robot. ”Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh,” an [Associated Press translation ](http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1989/Tass-Says-UFO-Landing-in-Soviet-Union-Confirmed/id-5117ff1e9d2da3160174e7d9c8cbb6c4)of the report read. ”They have also identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade about the park.” They left behind them “two pieces of unidentified rocks,” made of a substance that “cannot be found on Earth.” When pressed, TASS stood by the report. In fact, the agency could add more details a few days later, the New York _Times_ [reported](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/11/world/ufo-landing-is-fact-not-fantasy-the-russians-insist.html). For example, aliens were wearing “silvery overalls and bronze boots.” And, as TIME reported in the Oct. 23, 1989, issue, that wasn’t all: --- > “” --- But, as writer Howard G. Chua-Eoan explained, there was actually a pretty good reason for TASS and other Soviet news outlets to go nuts for crazy news like this. For one thing, the policy of _glasnost_ — openness in the media — was still relatively new, and publications were experimenting with how far they could go. More importantly, at a time when hope for the Soviet Union was waning, stories of aliens and mystical creatures provided something a little less depressing to think about. Though many educated Soviets objected strongly to the anti-scientific trend in the state media, UFOs weren’t the only fake reports for them to be mad about. “They’ve been feeding us rubbish about the dream of Communism for years, and we now see they were lying,” a Soviet source told TIME in 1989\. “At least this gives us something new to dream about.” **_Read the full 1989 analysis of Soviet media, here in TIME’s archives:_** [Elvis Spotted in Estonia!](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,958818,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/"},"headline":"Why 'Aliens' 'Landed' in Russia 25 Years Ago","datePublished":"2014-10-09T11:00:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:37:07.136Z","description":"They had small heads and wore silver overalls, apparently","url":"https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/","keywords":["Media","russia","Cold War","Soviet Union","USSR"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lily Rothman","jobTitle":"Rothman is managing editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/media/","name":"Media"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3475954/voronezh-ufo-report-1989/","name":"Why 'Aliens' 'Landed' in Russia 25 Years Ago"}}]}] ```