MOSCOW — A Siberian shaman walking to Moscow to exorcise the “demonic” Vladimir Putin was seized by armed police in a pre-dawn raid that sparked criticism from rights groups and mockery from opposition activists.
Alexander Gabyshev, who calls himself a “shaman warrior,” set out from Yakutsk, northeastern Siberia, in April. He planned to trek some 8,300 kilometers across Russia before arriving at the gates of the Kremlin in 2021.
“God told me that Putin is not a man, that he is a demon, and that I must exorcise him,” Gabyshev, 51, said during his journey, which was covered by a number of Russian-language media outlets. “There can be no democracy with the demon [in power].”
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Gabyshev had trekked almost 3,000km, gathering around two dozen followers along the way, before his arrest at a makeshift camp in eastern Siberia’s republic of Buryatia on Thursday.
“Armed security services blocked the highway, quickly encircled our camp and headed straight to the shaman’s tent,” Viktor Yegorov, one of Gabyshev’s supporters, said in a video from the scene. “They drove him off in an unknown direction.”
Amnesty International quickly condemned the arrest and labeled the anti-Putin shaman a “prisoner of conscience.”
Source: The anti-Putin ‘shaman warrior’ who spooked the Kremlin
