MOSCOW, OCT. 9 -- The Soviet news agency Tass announced today that "humanlike" giants and a midget robot landed in the Russian city of Voronezh, took a walk and left again for space in a "banana-shaped object." Tass, perhaps the world's grimmest press organ and the official wire service of the Soviet government, said that scientists "confirmed" residents' reports of the recent landing of the unidentified flying fruit near Voronezh. Others said the craft looked more like a "large shining ball" than a banana. The scientists "have also identified the landing site and found traces of aliens who made a short promenade around the park," Tass said, adding that the aliens "visited" the park at least three times at night. Witnesses said they saw "one, two or three" humanlike "creatures" -- "they were three or four meters high but had very small heads" -- come out of the UFO followed by a short robot. "Onlookers were overwhelmed with a fear that lasted for several days," Tass reported. On the back page of today's issue of the Communist Party youth newspaper, an article featured two UFO photos, including a derbylike object skimming over the onion domes of a Russian Orthodox church in Yaroslavl and a bizarre ovoid flying over the flats of the Far East. A Moscow-based scientist named Vladimir Azhazhei told the paper that while in the past UFOs were confined to study by "bourgeois" scientists, interest in the subject is booming here. He said that sightings had been increasing recently as fast "as mushrooms," and that Soviet scientists had now set up research centers in Moscow, Leningrad and Perm. But it is the Voronezh incident that seems to be the latest rage among Soviet UFO watchers. Tass allowed its experts to explain: "We identified the landing site by means of biolocation," said Genrikh Silanov, head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, in an interview with the news agency. "We detected a circle 20 meters in diameter, four four- to five-centimeter-deep dents, each with a diameter of 14 to 16 centimeters clearly visible. They are situated in the four points of a rhomb. We found two mysterious pieces of rock. "At first glance they looked like sandstone of a deep red color. However, mineralogical analysis has shown that the substance cannot be found on Earth. However, additional tests are needed to reach a more definite conclusion." Silanov could not be reached for any further incomprehensible comment. This report in Tass of the UFO in Voronezh comes hard on other amazing news reports, including an account of how scientists at a Moscow research institute are working with tissue specimens of the brains of Lenin, Stalin and others to determine something or other.
