Russia is probing UFOs as military pilots have reported encounters with the mysterious phenomena, the head of Vladimir Putin's space agency confirmed.
Dmitry Rogozin, the chief of Roscosmos - Moscow's answer to NASA, made the admission as the topic has stepped from fringe conspiracy theories into a full on national security discussion.
Washington has been abuzz with talk about the unexplained encounters - now more commonly called Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) - and it seems so is Moscow.
Rogozin told Russian state TV that he believes in the existence of alien life - and said extraterrestrial civilisations could be more intelligent and more advanced than humans.
And he said the aliens could already be scrutinising mankind, much in the same way that human scientists study and monitor bacteria.
He said: "We can study bacteria, but we can also be studied just like bacteria."
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