When the Wind Changes

Russia Today (4-1-10) has issued a third in a series of special investigative Reports:

Scientists have confirmed that an unidentified flying object recently landed in a park in the Russian city of Voronezh...Competent authorities have identified the landing site and have apprehended a British citizen, Lord Christopher Monckton, promenading about the park and brandishing a hockey stick in the direction of scores of stunned onlookers.

A local scientist quoted in RIA Novosti (4-1-10), Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, the head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, reportedly claimed that Russia Today had greatly embellished his account of the events in Voronezh: "Don't believe all you hear from Russia Today," [Chichikov] stated. "We never gave them part of what they published."

The Kremlin-financed Russia Today reports that people who heard the alien speak ''were struck speechless for several hours.''

The authorities in Voronezh, some 300 miles southeast of Moscow, could not be reached tonight for comment. A spokesman for Russia Today, reached by telephone tonight, said the report was neither a hoax nor a joke. ''It is a serious dispatch,'' the night duty officer at the agency said.

Last November, Russia Today seemed to undergo a bizarre metamorphosis. In addition to its traditional role of dutifully reporting the comings and goings of Russian leaders, the Kremlin-financed satellite channel has taken to reporting supermarket-tabloid sensationalism with all the gravitas due a Copenhagen climate summit.

As RIA Novosti has noted, Russians have long been mesmerized by the occult, and lately the authorities seem to be feeding this interest. One of the hottest programs on Russia Today these days is a psychic healer who promises to cure everything from the common cold and flu to multiple sclerosis and AIDS, in person or via the airwaves.

There seems to be a particular fascination here with outer space; and the authorities have now set up a Commission Into Abnormal Phenomena to study the reports of alien landings, which are sprouting like mushrooms after a rainfall.

One Report Is Debunked

A Commission has already debunked a Russia Today report last fall which asserted that a spaceship landed near southern Moscow, leaving behind a huge scorched patch. RIA Novosti was first to report the Commission's findings: firefighters believe that a haystack caught fire and singed the ground.

All of the sightings, and even the ''re-evaluations,'' are earnestly reported. Indeed, the report in Russia Today (4-1-10) was presented with a straight face and with technical descriptions worthy of a major scientific discovery. Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov, the head of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory mentioned above, said in an interview with Russia Today that the landing site was identified ''by means of bilocation.''

According to Soviet reference books, bilocation is an extrasensory method of tracking objects or people invisible to the human eye.

'Mysterious Pieces of Rock'

Chichikov described the landing spot in Voronezh as being "about 20 yards in diameter, with four charred, lattice-shaped impressions branded on the grass that resembled a grille, or portcullis, situated in the four points of a rhomb.'' Chichikov said scientists also found ''two mysterious pieces of rock'' and that ''mineralogical analysis determined that the substance was an unusually pure form of blarney.''

Russia Today said Voronezh residents reported that the alien visited the place after dark at least three times. He arrived in a large shining ball, or disk, and emerged through a pink latticed hatch, or portcullis, "accompanied by a small robot'' and went for a ''short promenade about the park.''

A Stare Silences Boy

On his first visit, the bug-eyed creature---who was fashionably attired in silvery overalls, bronze boots, and sported a hot pink portcullis on his chest---promenaded around the park trailed by his companion, the robot.

Terrified, a boy began to scream; but with a stare of the alien's shining eyes, Russia Today reported, the boy was paralyzed and struck dumb.

When the alien touched his fingers to the glowing pink portcullis emblazoned on his chest, the boy, whose name was not given in the report, promptly vanished, but reappeared after the alien embarked in the U.F.O.

Report Treated Seriously

Editors of Russia Today, and indeed many of its viewers, treated the report as a serious scientific phenomenon. No extra men are assigned to patrol the area because the department is short-handed, said the duty officer at the Voronezh state security office, who identified himself only by his last name, Bobkov; but he said troops would be dispatched ''if he appears again.''

The Russia Today correspondent covering the case of the mysterious visitor to Voronezh, Pavel Pavlovich Poshlost', seemed insulted that anyone would treat the story with anything but the full seriousness that it was given by the agency.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Pashlost' described conversations with dozens of witnesses and with state security experts who had examined the evidence and seen the dumbfounded boy.

While not a witness himself, Mr. Poshlost' said he had visited the site. ''The traces were still seen,'' he said. ''I could see the four charred, lattice-shaped impressions branded in the grass. They resembled the hot pink portcullis witnesses reported seeing on the alien's chest.''

Mr. Poshlost' said his reports from Voronezh would continue.

Russian psychiatrist Andrei Snezhnevsky of the Serbsky Institute maintains that the appearance of the peer with the portcullis may be attributable to sluggish schizophrenia triggered by heat stroke. RIA Novosti (7-23-10) reports that "according to environmentalists, the heat wave in Russia has been caused by man-made global warming."