Setka: The Soviet UFO Network Between the Military and the Academy

Before dawn on 20 September 1977, people in Petrozavodsk saw a huge light moving across the sky. It looked like a glowing disc, then like a bright jellyfish. It hovered, changed direction and spread light over the city. Taxi drivers, police officers, airport workers, sailors and residents in several places around the Baltic reported similar objects. Reports came from Copenhagen and Helsinki on one side and from distant Soviet regions on the other.

Soviet newspapers first described the sight as an unusual event in the sky. Officials later connected it to the Kosmos-955 satellite, launched from Plesetsk that day. That explanation could account for some of the glow, but it did not match every time, direction or description recorded by witnesses. Some people said they saw beams directed toward the ground. Others reported changes in shape and movement that did not resemble a single rocket plume.