CIA document doesn’t prove aliens turned Soviet soldiers to stone — and it was never classified

In April 2025, rumors spread on social media about an allegedly declassified CIA document that proved a story about aliens turning 23 Soviet soldiers to stone after a UFO was shot down.

One X post (archived) with the claim reached more than 11.1 million views, as of this writing. The text on the image attached to the post read, “DECLASSIFIED CIA DOCUMENT CLAIMS ALIENS TURNED 23 SOVIET SOLDIERS TO STONE AFTER UFO WAS SHOT DOWN.”

(X user @kirawontmiss)

The story also gained attention across social media platforms including X, Threads, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. Podcaster Joe Rogan also discussed the alleged CIA document in an episode of his podcast featuring guest Post Malone. 

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News outlets including the New York Post, Daily Mail, Fox News, India Today, NDTV and The Economic Times, also reported on the alleged document.

In short, although the document at the center of the claims was genuinely available on the CIA’s website, it was not an official agency report. Rather, it was a translation of a Ukrainian newspaper article based on a fictional story originally published in the tabloid Weekly World News. Additionally, the document was never classified and therefore never declassified. As such, we have rated this claim as false.

We contacted the CIA for comment on the document’s classification status, credibility and source, and will update this article if we receive a response.

What’s actually in the document

The document circulating online appeared on the official CIA website under the title, “Paper reports alleged evidence on mishap involving a UFO.” 

It opened with a line crediting the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which the agency established to “monitor, record, transcribe, and analyze foreign broadcasts,” according to records in the National Archives. The third line of the document contained the label “UNCLAS,” indicating the page was never classified — meaning it was also never declassified, despite what some social media users claimed. The fifth line suggested the document was supposed to be passed to the BBC.

(CIA.gov/Snopes Illustration)

Additionally, the top section of the document stated that the source was an article that appeared in the March 27, 1993, issue of the Ukrainian newspaper Holos Ukrayiny, on Page 5. Further down, however, a note in the document explained that the story was a reprint of an article, titled “Cosmic Revenge,” that ran in another newspaper, Ternopil Vechirniy (see image below). Ternopil is a city in western Ukraine. 

We have contacted both Ukrainian newspapers to request copies of the relevant issues and will update this story if we hear back.

The article also noted the story originated from “the authoritative magazine Canadian Weekly World News.” Weekly World News is a U.S. newspaper known for publishing fabricated stories. It is also distributed in Canada — likely the reason the CIA translation of the Ukrainian article used the word “Canadian” to describe the publication.

(CIA.gov)

The scan of the document showed a stamp in the bottom right corner marking it as “Approved for Release” in May 2000, although the CIA’s Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room website said the document was released on Jan. 31, 2011.

The text of the document described an alleged extraterrestrial encounter supposedly documented in a secret KGB report the CIA obtained. The full text of the article read: 

After Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved, in 1991, the KGB top secret intelligence administration, a lot of material from that department found its way abroad, in particular to the CIA. As reported by the authoritative magazine Canadian Weekly World News, U.S. intelligence obtained a 250-page file on the attack by a UFO on a military unit in Siberia.

The file contains not only many documentary photographs and drawings but also testimonies by actual participants in the events. One of the CIA representatives referred to this case as “a horrific picture of revenge on the part of extraterrestrial creatures, a picture that makes one’s blood freeze.”

According to the KGB materials, a quite low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer appeared above a military unit that was conducting routine training maneuvers. For unknown reasons, somebody unexpectedly launched a surface-to-air missile and hit the UFO. It fell to earth not far away, and five short humanoids with “large heads and large black eyes” emerged from it.

It is stated in the testimonies by the two soldiers who remained alive that, after freeing themselves from the debris, the aliens came close together and then “merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape.” That object began to buzz and hiss sharply, and then became brilliant white. In a few seconds, the sphere grew much bigger and exploded, flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that very instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned into… stone poles. Only two soldiers who stood in the shade and were less exposed to the luminous explosion survived.

The KGB report goes on to say that the remains of the UFO and the “petrified soldiers” were transferred to a secret scientific research institution near Moscow. Specialists assume that a source of energy that is still unknown to Earthlings instantly changed the structure of the soldiers’ living organisms, having transformed it into a substance whose molecular composition is no different from that of limestone.

The article concluded with a statement attributed to a CIA representative, reading, “If the KGB file corresponds to reality, this is an extremely menacing case. The aliens possess such weapons and technology that go beyond all our assumptions. They can stand up for themselves if attacked.” However, this quote was not from the CIA itself, but was rather part of the reprinted article.

Original source of the story

The story originated in the Sept. 8, 1992, issue of Weekly World News. A version of that issue marked for distribution in Canada — seemingly the same one the author of the original Ukrainian article consulted — is accessible via Google Books. 

The cover of the issue featured the headline “Russians Shoot Down UFO,” accompanied by a subhead reading “Angry aliens turn soldiers into stone.” It also displayed a black-and-white image depicting what appeared to be a crashed flying saucer, with several figures in military uniforms and a tank in the background. A caption in the top right corner stated, “Never before seen: Secret KGB photo taken in 1987!”

(Weekly World News via Google Books)

The full story appeared on pages 4 and 5 of the tabloid. On Page 4, the same photograph used on the cover has the caption, “INCREDIBLE PHOTO of the UFO crash site shows three of the Russian soldiers, frozen instantly by the enraged spacecraft crew who zapped them with ball-shaped bursts of pure energy.” Therefore, the caption suggested that the photo captured the exact moment the soldiers were turned to stone.

(Weekly World News via Google Books) 

The article opened, “Soviet troops shot down a low-flying UFO in Siberia in 1987 but the space alien survivors got their revenge by turning 23 Russian soldiers to stone.” It credited the story to unnamed CIA sources “who have access to dozens of Soviet spy files that have surfaced in the United States since former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev dismantled the country’s super-secret KGB Intelligence agency after the collapse of communism in 1991.”

The article claimed the UFO file contained 250 pages of eyewitness testimony from two soldiers who mysteriously survived the extraterrestrial attack. The article closely mirrored the text found in the CIA document, claiming Soviet experts concluded that “an unknown energy source altered the structure of the soldiers’ flesh, turning them into a substance that is molecularly indistinguishable from limestone.”

Finally, the article featured a “sketch of one of the snout-nosed aliens,” which a caption said was “part of the KGB file on the 1987 UFO incident.” According to the caption, “Notations indicate that it was drawn by one of the soldiers who survived when his buddies were turned to stone by the creatures.”

All in all, there was no truth to the story about aliens turning 23 Soviet soldiers to stone after troops shot down a UFO in 1987. The rumor originated from a 1992 issue of Weekly World News, a U.S. tabloid known for fictional and sensational content. The CIA document cited in social posts wasn’t an official report, but a translation of a Ukrainian article that reprinted the fabricated story, and there was no indication that it was ever classified.

In early April 2025, we debunked a similar false claim that “recently declassified” CIA files confirmed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler left Germany for South America after surviving WWII.