According to reports, Elisha Ponomaryov saw other people looking skyward and pointing at the contrails. She didn't know what they were but had the presence of mind to take a photo. Unfortunately, she was too late to capture what caused the contrails. However, other witnesses claimed to have seen three or four yellow spheres flying haphazardly and leaving the trails behind them. One was Zemfira Bocharova, who gave this description:
I saw them at 6.25am and there were four, one of them was particularly bright and two others were flying parallel with that - and then the forth one was at a different angle and further away from the other three.As usual, there was no comment from space or government officials or the military on the strange contrails. There was some speculation that they could have been from a rocket, possibly carrying a secret payload, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but that's 1,500 miles from Biysk and there was no report of any launches on that day. Meteors and weather were also suggested, but there were no meteor reports and no weather incidents that could have caused the trails.
Comment: Very interesting, especially when looking at the actual photo: