In 1978, following the Petrozavodsk incident and a directive from the USSR Military-Industrial Commission, the Soviet government launched two parallel secret UFO research programs, SETKA-MO under the Ministry of Defense and SETKA-AN under the Academy of Sciences, which together ran for thirteen years and analyzed roughly 3,000 reports.

SETKA-AN was based at IZMIRAN (Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation) under Dr. Vladimir Migulin, with Yuli Platov as executive lead. SETKA-MO, led by General V.P. Balashov, required all military units to conduct round-the-clock sky monitoring and report anomalous phenomena through the chain of command. The programs concluded in 1990–1991. Platov and Sokolov later published findings in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, determining that over 90% of cases had mundane explanations, while approximately 10%, roughly 300 cases, remained unresolved.