MOSCOW —
Will there be nuclear war? Will
Russia win the Ukraine offensive? Will my son
survive?
اضافة اعلان
As the Kremlin
presses ahead with its military intervention in the pro-Western country, more
and more Russians are turning to astrologers.
In Russia’s second
city of
Saint Petersburg, bespectacled Elena Korolyova receives clients in her
apartment, where 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 told AFP.
Astrologers,
psychics, and mediums have for years been popular in Russia, and particularly
turbulent years have seen demand for their services increase.
As the country
reels from a barrage of unprecedented sanctions over Ukraine, more and more
Russians are turning to astrology as they peer into the future.
Korolyova, a
grey-haired philologist by training who rose to fame in the former imperial
capital through word of mouth, seeks to reassure her clients.
She predicts that
Moscow will not only survive the economic storm, but also emerge victorious.
“The global
cataclysm will intensify in September, but Russia will come out of it stable
and prosperous,” she said.
Korolyova charges
5,000 rubles ($90) per consultation and says — without wanting to reveal any
numbers — that since
President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on
February 24 requests from clients have increased.
In the first week
of the conflict, the number of searches for “astrologer” more than doubled on
Russia’s main search engine Yandex — from 42,900 on February 19 to 95,000 on
March 5, according to the company’s keyword statistics.
Political
astrology
In Moscow, another
prominent astrologer, Konstantin Daragan, who made a name for himself by
claiming to have predicted the coronavirus pandemic, also says Russia will win
on the ground in Ukraine and in its clash with the West.
“Russia will
become the centre of the world after the conflict,” he said on social media recently.
Originally from
Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas that the Russian army has been seeking to
conquer, the aeronautical engineer turned astrologer claims to have advised
ministers, bankers and even members of Ukraine’s secret services in the past.
Having left for
Moscow after pro-Western authorities came to power in Kyiv in 2014, he supports
the Russian military intervention, even if his hometown of Lysychansk has been
ravaged by fighting.
For him, too,
business is booming.
His “School of
Classical Astrology” doubled its student numbers since Putin launched the
Ukraine intervention, now counting around 200 in Moscow.
Star wars
Sociologist Alexei Levinson of the independent Levada research center
said that an attempt to read the stars is a way of making sense of reality for
many “confused” Russians.
“Faced with a
universe that has collapsed, some prefer to take stars as guides rather than
their leaders,” he said.
“Astrology today
is a kind of psychotherapy or new religion.”
Anna Markus, one
of Daragan’s students in her 50s, said she looks to the stars 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 told AFP.
She has a star
chart that she claims proves the US is guilty.
Over the border in
battered Ukraine, the stars, predictably, show the opposite.
Astrologer Vlad
Ross, who is popular 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 another star Ukrainian astrologer, Angela Pearl, in a video viewed more
than a million times since mid-May.
Desperate
Ukrainians are turning to astrologers for a sign that their loved ones on the
front will survive or if they will have to flee advancing Russian troops.
Ukrainians want to
know “if nuclear war will happen, if they should leave their country, if their
loved ones are in danger”, astrologer Olena Umanets told AFP.
“Russia will
explode in March 2023,” predicted the 38-year-old former musician, who fled
Ukraine for
Switzerland.
Her $100 online
consultation reassured one client, a 46-year-old television producer in Kyiv
named Kristina, worried about her husband who is fighting 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.”
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