Lovecraft, Synchronicity and News Clipping

[Stormkhan]

One of my great Christmas pressies was a HB 1967 Gollancz edition of Dagon and other macabre tales by that master of the thesaurus H.P. Lovecraft.
Inside, it was "signed" by it's previous owner and dated 3rd July 1967 and has two items enclosed; a change of address card form one of their friends, postmarked 12th February 1968 and a newspaper clipping, dated 28th March 1979.

Russian scientists have photographed what they believe are the remains of the fabled city of Atlantis.
Dr Andrei Askenov, deputy director of the Soviet Academy's Institute of Oceanography, said analysis of eight photographs taken deep in the Atlantic showed what appeared to be the remains of giant stairways and walls.
Speaking to journalists aboard the Soviet survey ship Vitiaz moored in the Tagus river at Lisbon. He said they had discovered what appeared to be man-made structures near a submarine mountain midway between Portugal and Madeira.

Vegetation cover

Dr. Askenov said the photographs would be published soon, but all the structures were heavily eroded, and in places were destroyed and covered by submarine vegetation.
More observations and tests would have to be conducted before definite scientific conclusions could be drawn, he said.

The cutting is on aged ordinary print-paper with a broken business article on the reverse (mentioning Thatcher).

Now, I love the book, I like old 'scraps' from strangers memories but my questions:

Is this a hoax? The bad editing in the middle of the article ("...moored in the Tagus river at Lisbon. He said they...") smacks of the Guardian newspaper but the scientists name makes my pun-detector start bleeping - Askenov? Askenov questions, you getenov answers!
Did the photos ever get published?

My giggle at synchronicity comes from the book being bought for me on the strength of my liking for Lovecrafts stories - the Fortean clipping was purely fortuitous!

What a great Fortean Christmas present!

 

[dreeness]

Andrey Aksenov.

(Feed a search engine enough variant spellings, and it's bound to cough up something sooner or later.)


(edited to add)

Include "atlantis" in search, to avoid superfluous Andreys.