Though reported by the AP near the end of January, 1985, there's not a firm date of incident available, but it almost certainly occurred within days or weeks of the AP article.
Apparently, pilots and passengers aboard a Soviet (a.k.a. Russian) airliner encountered a distant "star-like" UFO which illuminated the earth below with a bright beam of light. The newspaper, Trud quoted a Soviet scientist who confirmed the case as "undoubtedly abnormal." A domestic Aeroflot flight approaching Minsk encountered "what appeared to be a large, unblinking star (which) suddenly shed a thin ray of light which fell...down on the ground" from an astounding altitude estimated to be 25-30 miles.
Again quoting from Trud, the AP added, "Ground control at the time registered splashes on its screens in the same part of air space." Co-pilot Gennady Lazurin, informed initially that radar showed nothing, stated, "Oh, well, they'll be saying we're not normal." (Note: That quote sums up a primary reason why pilots generally abhor reporting encounters officially, as careers and reputations may be jeopardized -- even to this very day, unfortunately, despite some slowly changing attitudes.)
Four crew members advised that they "could see distinctly everything down in the sector of the ground illuminated by the cone-shaped shaft of light -- the houses and the roads."
Things, however, took a very strange turn when the mystery beam suddenly focused on the plane itself. "The pilots," Trud continued, "saw a dazzling white spot surrounded by concentric colored rings," and the UFO then sped toward the airliner "at flashing speed," leaving a greenish cloud in its wake. The object, now at an altitude of 33,000 feet, paced the plane side-by-side and stayed with it for the remainder of the flight ("like an honorary escort," said one of the pilots).
Emphasizing the global nature of UFOs, Soviet National Academy of Sciences member Nikolai Zheltukhin -- also deputy chairman of a state commission on unexplained phenomena -- told Trud that the incident "is indeed of interest, although the commission already knows of similar cases. That the object reversed course instantaneously and reached the ground with a ray of light of unusual intensity from a very high altitude is undoubtedly abnormal...The airliner's crew encountered what we call an unidentified flying object."
Of further interest, the AP took a few lines to mention that the (former) Soviet Union established a special air force commission to investigate UFO reports, "but few details of its work have ever been released."
Currently, several nations continue to pop UFO files out of their inner sanctums like jacks-in-the-box. Needless to say, the U.S. isn't yet among them.
