The following article has been published by the Moscow Times on page 8 on Wednesday, September 25, 2002.
By Brian Arengi
Staff Writer
UFO's exist and they must be studied, according to Yury Korzhenevsky, the driving force behind the UFOs and Secret Projects web site.
Located at www.ufo.kiev.ua, the site has a list of articles on the subject, along with photographs, videos, surveys and a forum.
"Everyone has their point of view on what's happening around them, they can believe or not believe in UFOs," Korzhenevsky, who is also a third-year student at the National Medical University of Ukraine in Kiev, said in an e-mail interview.
"I offer the material, people decide for themselves whether they believe or not," he said.
Korzhenevsky claims to have seen a UFO himself -- and he describes the event with scientific precision.
"On Feb. 20, 1999, in Kiev at 15:25, in the sky above an empty space at a distance of about 250 meters and a height of 25 to 30 meters, I saw a silver, disc-shaped UFO with a diameter of between 1 and 1.5 meters," he said.
"The object hung in the air, lightly rocking from one side to the other. The sighting lasted from 15 to 20 seconds. The sky was then covered with clouds."
Korzhenevsky became interested in UFOs as a child and eventually started exploring the Internet for information on the subject. He began sorting cutouts from newspapers, magazines and web articles with the intention of creating a miniature UFO encyclopedia.
"My friend from Odessa, having seen my collection, asked me: 'Why don't you create a web site? Then you won't have any trouble presenting your material and lots of people will be able to see it,'" Korzhenevsky said.
UFOs and Secret Projects was launched in February 2001 and had about 100 visitors on its first day in cyberspace. The site, available in English and Russian, has since kept that pace, with most of visitors coming from the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Many of the articles on the site's main page aren't about UFOs but are space-related, and the www.spacenews.com web site is a popular source of information.
Regarding the pictures, Korzhenevsky said there are plenty of photographs purportedly of UFOs on the Internet, but few are authentic. "This could be various objects: ball lightning, a fireball, an airplane, a satellite," he said, "and, of course, there are counterfeits."
Photographs are carefully scrutinized, photographers are questioned and negatives are checked, if possible, Korzhenevsky said. "On my site, I try to mix those photos and videos that look the most realistic."
Despite all the fakes, he believes there is enough evidence that UFOs exist - and that governments have the evidence locked away.
"They have photos and videotapes and captured or discovered UFOs," he said.
