Bizarre rituals held by Shamans have been taking place across Russia to back Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The rituals to summon underworld spirits came days after Putin himself was rumoured to have consulted Shamans, as he makes key war decisions including on whether to use nuclear weapons.
Shamans are typically thought to have the ability to heal, communicate with the other world and are known as traditional diviners of good and evil in Siberia.
Photos of the ritual show Shamans raising and strengthening the warrior's spirits, “to achieve victory over all enemies of the Great Bright Russia”.
The Supreme Shaman Kara-ool Dopchun-ool, 74, led calls in the ancient religious ceremonies to support the “protection of our land, our people, our Fatherland” in the war with Ukraine.
Reports say Shamans from various cities in the country: Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, St. Petersburg, and Sochi, Tuva and Khakassia obeyed his call to support the troops in Putin’s war.
The Supreme Shaman, once a former fur trader, claims the rituals echo his grandfather who was ordered by an earlier Kremlin dictator, Josef Stalin, to “perform a ritual over Stalingrad and help to win the battle” against the Nazis.
The chief Shaman says he was elected leader after “mass Shamanic hypnosis”.
He claims to be able to catch “with these claws [his curved fingernails]…cancer cells, viruses, and bacteria” and "throw them out the window”.
He told Meduza news outlet, Soldiers sent to Putin’s war have sought the help of Shamans to help keep them safe.
“The protection is very strong…bullets fly right by them,” he said.
Hundreds of men from his impoverished region, Tuva, have died in Ukraine in regular forces or private military companies.
He said: "The spirits of their ancestors help. We perform rituals in places of power."
“We practice Shamanism so that no harm will come to them, so they will be invulnerable… sometimes wives, fathers, or mothers come instead of soldiers.”
The chief Shaman has not directly spoken about the Russian President, but there are whispers that Putin and other members of the Russian elite- pay great attention to such rituals.
Telegram channel General SVR said Putin recently held “two meetings with Shamans” as he is “actively preparing for a nuclear war”.
The channel boasts of insider knowledge from the Kremlin.
There is no proof of their claims, but the channel stated: “The Shamans performed a ‘rite’ for Putin, in...which they said that ‘a burning bird brings victory and death’, leaving the interpretation…to the president's painful fantasy.”
Putin was said to take “Shamanic ravings….quite seriously”.
The Supreme Shaman, Kara-ool Dopchun-ool is pushing Putin's government to formally recognise Shamanism as an ancient religion.
