Roving Periscope: Why are the Russians, and Ukrainians flocking to astrologers?
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: A diminishing number of Russians trust their authoritarian government’s propaganda about its alleged successes in the over 130-day-old ongoing war in Ukraine. Many of them seem uncertain of their future, as shown by the number of insecure, scared Russians flocking to seek their astrologers’ advice.
“Since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, requests from clients have increased,” said Elena Korolyova, 63, a noted astrologer in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city after Moscow.
Will there be a nuclear war? Will Russia win the Ukraine offensive? Will my son survive? These are among the questions most anxious people want an answer to, the media reported.
While Moscow is relentlessly pressing troops in Ukraine, many Russians are apprehensive about the future of their own, families, and the country, which is virtually cut off from many nations across the world.
Psychics, clairvoyants, astrologers, and ‘mediums’ are more popular among fortune-seeking people. As the Russian economy slowly sinks from a barrage of unprecedented sanctions over Ukraine, more and more Russians are turning to astrology as they peep into an uncertain future.
But Korolyova, who charges 5,000 rubles (USD 90) per consultation, consoles her clients that Moscow will not only survive the economic storm but also emerge victorious, the media remarked.
The war against Ukraine, she said, will intensify in September, but Russia will win it and become more prosperous, she claimed.
Another prominent astrologer, Konstantin Daragan, who claimed to have predicted the coronavirus pandemic, said “Russia will become the centre of the world after the conflict.”
For him, too, business is booming, the media reported.
His “School of Classical Astrology” in Moscow doubled its student numbers to 200 since President Putin launched the Ukraine intervention on February 24.
An aeronautical engineer-turned-astrologer, he hails from the war-ravaged Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas which the Russian troops are trying to conquer. When the pro-West government took power in Kyiv in 2014, he left for Moscow to set up shop. Ever since, he claims to have advised ministers, bankers, and even members of Ukraine’s secret services in the past.
Sociologist Alexei Levinson said astrology today is a kind of psychotherapy or new religion.
Anna Markus, one of Daragan’s students in her 50s, said she has a star chart that she claims proves the United States is guilty in the Ukraine crisis.
But Ukraine is not free of astrologers either. Vlad Ross, a Ukrainian soothsayer, assures his clients 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.
Like their Russian counterparts, desperate Ukrainians are also 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.
The media reports, quoting yet another musician-turned-astrologer, Olena Umanets, said the Ukrainians are worried about a possible nuclear war and ask whether they should leave Ukraine.
“Russia will explode in March 2023,” Umanets, 38, predicted after she fled Ukraine for Switzerland. She charges $100 per consultation.
