Russia is using 'parapsychology' to remotely hack computers and read the minds of its enemies, a report in the Defence Ministry's official magazine claims.
Elite soldiers can read documents locked inside a safe by using mind power even if they are in a foreign language, according to the article.
The 'paranormal techniques' were reportedly developed during research into dolphin telepathy by the Soviet Union the 1980s.
The article states that top figures in the country have been trained in the special skills, although it is unclear if this includes the Kremlin's commander-in-chief Vladimir Putin .
But these eyebrow-raising claims have been dismissed as "fairytales" by an expert within the Russian Academy of Sciences.
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The article's author Nikolay Poroskov, a reserve colonel, claimed 'spetsnaz' troops successfully applied parapsychology during two military conflicts in Chechnya.
They had honed their telepathic ability while working with dolphins, he claimed.
“They were giving verbal commands to animals, and the animals obeyed… and it turned out it was applicable for both humans and technology.
“By force of a thought one can knock down computer programmes, burn crystals in generators, intercept any chat, disrupt any TV or radio programme, and any type of communication.
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"Experiments like reading a document inside a safe - even if it was written in an a foreign language that a person doesn’t speak - were successful, as well as figuring out people belonging to terrorist networks and finding potential targets for terrorist recruiters.”
He wrote: “Commanders wanted to know how it was possible to get information on enemy’s plan and what troops and resources it had,” stated the article in Armeiskiy Sbornik (The Army Digest), originally published in February.
“A person with meta-contact technology can carry a non-verbal interrogation.
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“He ‘sees through’ a captured enemy’s soldier, he sees what type of person the soldier is, what are his strengths and weaknesses and would it be possible to recruit him.
“The reliability of such interrogation is almost 100 hundred per cent.
“It is impossible to avoid it.
“Fighters of special forces are taught the technique for moment of potential capture (as are) the top people of the country, (and) chiefs of leading industrial and banking enterprises so that they can preserve secrets.”
But a source at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yevgeny Alexandrov, told RBC that "combat parapsychology" is pseudoscience with little evidence to back the claims up.
Alexandrov leads a commission in charge of combating fake scientific claims.
He said military parapsychology was developed in the Soviet era but “as in many countries of the world, such studies are recognised as pseudoscientific.
“All this is complete nonsense.
"No parapsychology exists at all, it’s a fairytale.”
