The following individuals contributed greatly to the material in ESP Wars, through interviews and contributed writings. We include their biographies to show the high level of our source material.
Lieutenant General, Alexei Yuryevich Savin, Ph.D.
Alexei Savin was born in 1946 in Moscow. His father was an aviation officer (later he became Major General of the Air Forces); his mother was a dramatic actor and singer. He graduated from the Sebastopol Naval School in 1969 as a “naval aircraft radio operator” with the rank of lieutenant engineer. After graduating, he started working at the Institute of Theoretical Cybernetics (today the Scientific Research Institute of Aviation Systems) in a military reception office. While working there for the next 16 years, he wrote a number of scientific papers about the development of combat aviation. In 1986, he was offered the post of senior officer in the Armaments Directorate of the Defense Ministry of the USSR.
In 1989, the Chief of the Armaments Directorate ordered him to assemble a commission of medical doctors, physicists, and military and civilian scientists to examine psychics. As a result of Savin’s report to the Ministry of Defense, he was sent to the General Staff. The Chief of that organization, Army General Mikhail Moiseyev, appointed him to be a head of the special top-secret department of the General Staff called Military Unit 10003, reporting directly to Moiseyev.
The focus of Savin’s work was the “Hidden Human Potentialities and Super-Capabilities Development Program,” which included developing extraordinary mental capabilities, and manifesting exceptional creative potential and extrasensory capabilities. At the same time, Savin’s department searched for breakthrough trends in the creation of new types of weapons.
For about 15 years, Alexei Savin worked at the General Staff, conducting R&D on ESP and the other areas. He and his staff created the largest ever military program on ESP and Human Potential research (in the world), and collaborated with the Russian Academy of Science. They trained groups of psychics-operatives for Marine, Air Forces and other Army branches, and actively tested psychics’ work in real combat operations in Chechnya (which he personally supervised, and where he was also wounded and was decorated with a medal).
Under Alexei Savin’s command, his department became a full Directorate of the General Staff with 50 employees (both, military and civilian) and many subcontractors (organizations and individuals) with an average financing of about $4,000,000 a year. Savin was personal adviser to the Prime Minister of the USSR Valentin Pavlov, several Secretaries of the Security Counsel of Russia, and Heads of the General Staff. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also was in contact with him, seeking advice.
Alexei Savin has achieved a rank of Lieutenant General and holds Ph.D. degrees in Technical and Philosophical sciences. He is an Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and honorary member of many scientific and professional societies. He wrote many scientific and professional (military) papers and four books, including the most recent A.Yu. Savin, D.N. Fonarev. A Guide for Eternity (Moscow, Vega, 2009, in Russian).
Major General Boris Konstantinovich Ratnikov
Boris Ratnikov was born in 1944 in the village of Kurovo, not far from Moscow. He graduated from the Aviation Institute in 1969 and went to work in the design office of the Scientific Research Institute of Aviation in the town of Zhukovsky. While working there for three years, he applied to work for the KGB. After finishing the KGB Officers School in Minsk, he worked for several years as a regional operative in the Municipal Department of the KGB in Ramenskoye (a town near Moscow), at various classified aviation enterprises, supervising their operations.
In 1981, he was sent to Afghanistan where he took part in numerous intelligence and combat operations. On his return, he worked in aircraft security at the Moscow department of the KGB for nearly three years. Subsequently, he left the KGB and accepted an invitation from Alexander Korzhakov to serve as his assistant in the Security Department for the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Republic, of which Boris Yeltsin had recently become chairman.
Serving in the Security Department, he became a direct participant of the coup in August 1991, which ended in the collapse of the USSR and the fall of communism. Soon after, he became the Deputy Head of the Federal Security Service, supervising analysis, operations, staff, technical and other services. There, he established a special parapsychological department and used many ESP techniques for security and intelligence. This service applied psychic techniques to international politics and to defending key Russian political figures against enemy psychic scanning and potential psychic attacks.
He appointed Major General Georgii Rogozin for this work. Rogozin later became the Deputy Head of the Yeltsin’s Presidential Security Service and widely known in Russia as “the astrologer and the psychic No.1” of the Russian Secret and Security Services. Together with Rogozin, Boris Ratnikov conducted many ESP experiments and intelligence operations, and developed a number of special ESP techniques for security services. Ratnikov personally supervised many security operations, defending the Russian President Boris Yeltsyn and other top Russian political figures.
Boris Ratnikov achieved a rank of Major General. He wrote many professional (military) papers and public articles published in the Russian press and has given a number of interviews for major Russian TV channels. Together with General Rogozin, he wrote the book Beyond the Known (Moscow, Vega, 2009, in Russian) about some results of their work with ESP.