Russians flip to astrology as they peer into future amid Ukraine battle
Will there be nuclear conflict? Will Russia win the Ukraine offensive? Will my son survive?
As the Kremlin presses forward with its army intervention within the pro-Western nation, increasingly more Russians are turning to astrologers.
In Russia’s second metropolis of Saint Petersburg, bespectacled Elena Korolyova receives shoppers in her house, the place two cats prowl between piles of books.
“People want to know what will become of Russia, cut off from the rest of world,” the 63-year-old advised AFP.
Astrologers, psychics and mediums have for years been well-liked in Russia, and notably turbulent years have seen demand for his or her providers improve.
As the nation reels from a barrage of unprecedented sanctions over Ukraine, increasingly more Russians are turning to astrology as they peer into the longer term.
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Korolyova, a grey-haired philologist by coaching who rose to fame within the former imperial capital via phrase of mouth, seeks to reassure her shoppers.
She predicts that Moscow is not going to solely survive the financial storm, but in addition emerge victorious.
“The global cataclysm will intensify in September, but Russia will come out of it stable and prosperous,” she stated.
Korolyova costs 5,000 rubles ($90) per session and says — with out desirous to reveal any numbers — that since President Vladimir Putin despatched troops into Ukraine on February 24 requests from shoppers have elevated.
In the primary week of the battle, the variety of searches for “astrologer” greater than doubled on Russia’s major search engine Yandex — from 42,900 on February 19 to 95,000 on March 5, in accordance with the corporate’s key phrase statistics.
POLITICAL ASTROLOGY
In Moscow, one other distinguished astrologer, Konstantin Daragan, who made a reputation for himself by claiming to have predicted the coronavirus pandemic, additionally says Russia will win on the bottom in Ukraine and in its conflict with the West.
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“Russia will become the centre of the world after the conflict,” he stated on social media just lately.
Originally from Ukraine’s jap area of Donbas that the Russian military has been searching for to beat, the aeronautical engineer turned astrologer claims to have suggested ministers, bankers and even members of Ukraine’s secret providers up to now.
Having left for Moscow after pro-Western authorities got here to energy in Kyiv in 2014, he helps the Russian army intervention, even when his hometown of Lysychansk has been ravaged by preventing.
For him, too, enterprise is booming.
His “School of Classical Astrology” doubled its scholar numbers since Putin launched the Ukraine intervention, now counting round 200 in Moscow.
STAR WARS
Sociologist Alexei Levinson of the impartial Levada analysis centre stated that an try to learn the celebrities is a approach of constructing sense of actuality for a lot of “confused” Russians.
“Faced with a universe that has collapsed, some prefer to take stars as guides rather than their leaders,” he stated.
“Astrology today is a kind of psychotherapy or new religion.”
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Anna Markus, one among Daragan’s college students in her 50s, stated she seems to be to the celebrities for “logic in events on Earth”.
“Russia is designated as the only culprit of the conflict, but it is obvious that a third country is the real culprit,” she advised AFP.
She has a star chart that she claims proves the United States is responsible.
Over the border in battered Ukraine, the celebrities, predictably, present the other.
Astrologer Vlad Ross, who’s well-liked in Ukrainian media, says that Putin is “gravely ill” and “will not survive past March 2023”.
“Saturn is the sign of Russia against Uranus, the sign of Ukraine. Our victory is imminent,” assured one other star Ukrainian astrologer, Angela Pearl, in a video considered greater than 1,000,000 instances since mid-May.
Desperate Ukrainians are turning to astrologers for an indication that their family members on the entrance will survive or in the event that they should flee advancing Russian troops.
Ukrainians wish to know “if nuclear war will happen, if they should leave their country, if their loved ones are in danger”, astrologer Olena Umanets advised AFP.
“Russia will explode in March 2023,” predicted the 38-year-old former musician, who fled Ukraine for Switzerland.
Her $100 on-line session reassured one consumer, a 46-year-old tv producer in Kyiv named Kristina, frightened about her husband who’s preventing on the frontline.
“My husband just called me. He thanks God for having survived the night,” she wrote to her astrologer in June.
“Thank you for having encouraged me to pray for him, it relieved me to share this responsibility with the stars.”
