Jacques Vallée investigated. Decades later, Knapp investigated and this is his account,
right here telling of the story on YT on video (click on this bolded text to listen to this story): or click on below video if you wanna see the entire Knapp Russia Report
from the beginning.
Regarding Knapp's report, I listened to the two parter, and while there is no doubt that Knapp is an excellent journalist, for some reason he has an uncharacteristic and very strange anti-Russian stance.
He repeated these weird statements so many times (that after the collapse of the Soviet Union people finally had a chance at
democracy and freedom, but it was demolished after Putin came to power and the dictatorial rule has returned - paraphrasing. But he used the words "democracy and freedom" ad nauseam) that I thought that perhaps it was nothing more than a lip service, a necessary bashing, so he could continue doing his research. I still hope that this is what is happening.
Beside that he made factual errors. For example, according to his own statement, he came to Russia for the second time in 1996. And he was describing all kind of corrupt things happening, associating it with Yeltsin leaving and Putin coming to power, and that this was the time when it became impossible to get any information on UFOs. and that the military person he was in contact with the first time was detained on allegations of corruption and treason, etc.That this was the period when the commies were back in power
, so they closed off any access to information on UFOs.
Well, it's true that it was a hard period. These were the horrible 90's and it was really bad back then. Corruption and crime everywhere. But Yeltzin was very much in power back then. Sure, there were some changes in power. There were a lot of various parties. But there was no major change in power until the end of 1999. When Putin became the president.
As for corruption allegations, it's a very high chance that this military person was actually guilty. Back then people tried to survive and make money in various ways, including selling sensitive information to the foreigners. It also wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility to continue feeding with all kind of documents and supposedly sensitive information as long as the foreigner would continue paying. See below.
According to Knapp, he hired the services of Nikolay Kapranov. Also according to Knapp, Kapranov was a very serious guy and familiar with very high up people (I couldn't find any information on him so far). And that he was a physicist. Knapp hired him to look for people and information about UFOs.
And Kapranov found Colonel Boris Sokolov, who has been supplying Knapp with a lot of information. This is what
a book in Russian had to say about Sokolov:
A similar collection of observational material, though not on such a grandiose scale, was organized in the institutions closed within the framework of the program to the USSR Academy of Sciences, primarily at the stations of the State Committee for Hydrometeorology (head organization - Institute of Applied Geophysics). The main emphasis in the work of the "academic" organizations was still made on the analysis of the conditions of observation of anomalous phenomena and physical mechanisms of their development. Specialists in atmospheric and plasma physics, geophysicists, geochemists, mathematicians, etc. were involved in this work. As a result, all prerequisites were created for collecting sufficiently complete information on observations of all kinds of anomalous phenomena, its objective analysis and construction of adequate models.
The coordination of research in this area was carried out by Colonel Sokolov Boris Alexandrovich, candidate of technical sciences. He was the coordinator of research on anomalous phenomena in the Ministry of Defense and the USSR Academy of Sciences. By Colonel Sokolov's admission, "for ten years the Soviet Union was a huge listening post." During this period of time, B.A. Sokolov received thousands of reports of anomalous phenomena.
And then came the so-called perestroika, everything collapsed. These were years of confusion and chaos. The very notion of state and military secrecy collapsed, our secrets began to be sold off and simply given to our foreign "partners" and "friends". At that time, when he retired, Colonel Sokolov took with him thousands of unique documents concerning research into anomalous phenomena, including those on unidentified flying objects, and then sold them to the Americans.
From his voluminous files, he selected 400 of the most mysterious cases. Colonel Sokolov allowed the Americans to buy the entire file.
the entire dossier, some of the documents were classified. And he practically sold the documents directly to American intelligence.
It's possible that "the Americans" are no other than Knapp. Unless there were also others to whom Sokolov sold the information. I think that the last part about "American intelligence" is the author's assumption, but who knows.
Considering the above it wouldn't be surprising for Sokolov to be jailed for corruption or treason. And it would have nothing to do with Russia "missing the opportunity of getting "freedom and democracy"", or the "authoritarian state returning after Yeltzin leaving". Sokolov clearly did something illegal (in any country), so it's not surprising that the state would take steps to prevent further leaks. But I guess this way it sounds like a more interesting story.
But will be looking more into the Soviet and Russian UFO cases.
Look forward to watching! 
