Russian president asked to investigate MP's claims of alien abduction

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the guy at left here, is the President of the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation. He is also a chess champion, a publisher, a multimillionaire, and a very eccentric dude. In a recent television interview, he claimed to have been abducted by aliens back in 1997. Now, a fellow member of the Russian government wants him investigated—over concerns that his alien abduction claims either mean he's a crackpot, or that he's undergone an experience of great military and political significance to Russia, and possibly leaked state secrets to extraterrestrial visitors.

Ilyumzhinov said the aliens didn't make themselves known to the rest of the world because they weren't ready, adding that he communicated with them telepathically because there wasn't enough oxygen.

"I believe I talked to them and saw them. I perhaps wouldn't believe it if it wasn't for 3 witnesses - my driver, my minister and my assistant," who were apparently in the apartment at the time, Ilyumzhinov said.

ABC News, True/Slant, BBC.

• [Anonymous]

  Steven Hawking: Not crazy.
  Kirsan Ilyumzhinov: Crazy.

  Huh?

  • [JoshuaZ]

    Anon, First of all, his name is Stephen Hawking. Second of all, one of these two people is not making any claims about alien abductions so I don’t know where you are getting this comparison.

    (Incidentally, I don’t think that Ilyumzhinov is crazy. There are a large number of normal events that can do this sort of thing. I get sleep paralysis sometimes and I’ve encountered aliens, demons ghosts, and the Borg. I just know that this is weird brain behavior and not anything external. This fellow doesn’t seem to understand that.)

• [cuvtixo]

  Don’t the Russians listen to Stephen Hawking? Extraterrestrials, being advanced enough to have interstellar transportation, would simply crush us, no secrecy needed.

• [David Carroll]

  Is the U.S. now engaged in a crazy politician race with the Russians? Prepare Biden for launch: We need a counterstrike!

• [jamiethehutt]

  They probably want to question him about it because if *I* was an intelligence agency who wanted to question someone without them even knowing that I had I would make them think they’d undergone an alien abduction too…

• [deckard68]

  There’s nothing atypical in his descriptions of what he experienced. So regardless of whether one beleives these are external or internal experiences, there’s no reason to assume he’s any different — or deficient! — than anyone else who has had the experiences.

  “Skeptics” and “believers” agree there is no evidence of mental illness among people who have had these experiences, regardless of what they may be. The most anyone has detected through personality assessments (Chris French on the skeptic side, and John Mack on the believer side) is that experiencers have “high absorption”, which is described on the Mack site as follows:

  A study of 40 experiencers and 40 control subjects conducted in the 1997 by John Mack’s organization PEER (but left unpublished) found that “experiencers show moderate dissociative capacities (lower than pathological norms) and high absorption.” PEER’s report explained the terms: “Dissociation and absorption are two personality characteristics related to entering altered states. Dissociation is an ability to split off certain mental processes from the main body of consciousness with various degrees of autonomy. Absorption is a personality style which denotes the degree to which an individual’s attention can remain absorbed cognitively in sensory stimuli or daydreams. Thus, dissociation seems to mark an ability to enter altered states, while absorption seems to relate to an ability to maintain consciousness in that altered state.”

  In short, Ilyumzhinov is probably just a normal guy.

• [Anonymous]

  Maybe he smoked some salvia divinorum or DMT and didn’t know it?

• [Anonymous]

  Well I dunno anything about how he differs from others who claim alien abduction, but I can tell you that Ilyumzhinov is definitely not a normal guy…. he’s a crackpot all right: feel free to venture over to any major chess website, or read any book about events in the world of international chess if you want to find out some details about the man. Kirsan has been the head of FIDE (Federation International des Echecs, the major governing body of the professional chess world) for over a decade now, and his regime has been notoriously corrupt for years now. The former world chess champion, Anatoly Karpov, is currently bidding to be a nominee to replace him as the head of FIDE, but most onlookers and “those-in-the-know” give Karpov little to zero chance of toppling him, due to the extremities of corruption and intimidation tactics that have become commonplace throughout Kirsan Ilyumzhinov’s organization, and in fact throughout his home country of Kalmykia. The professional chess world has been in a state of some chaos for years now, and many hope that removing Ilyumzhinov from his post will bring some order back.

  And as for this investigation into his UFO claims…. I think that perhaps there is more involved – perhaps Karpov has finally been talking to the “right” people. :)