On September 27, 1989, children and a police lieutenant witnessed a large red sphere land in a Voronezh park. TASS issued an official report on October 9, unprecedented for Soviet state media, citing Genrikh Silanov of the Voronezh Geophysical Laboratory, who documented a 20-meter depression and four landing dents.

TASS correspondent Sergei Maisky filed the dispatch. Police Lieutenant Sergei Matveyev independently confirmed observing a body flying silently at low altitude, though he saw no occupants. Silanov's team collected soil samples; sixteen radiometric analyses and nineteen ground checks later found no clear anomalies. Silanov subsequently denied some claims TASS attributed to him. The Soviet Scientific Commission ordered a formal inquiry. The incident remains notable as the first time Soviet state media officially acknowledged a UAP landing report as worthy of scientific attention.