Steve Hayes
2022-10-23 06:04:12 UTC
The Crazy Mystical Impulses Sending Putin Wild in Ukraine
The Russian president’s flair for the superstitious may be deeper—and
deadlier–than we think.
A. Craig Copetas
Published in The Daily Beast, Oct. 22, 2022 11:14PM ET
https://t.co/NXkGtXOEuU
If you suspect that Vladimir Putin’s decision-making process is above
the creed of superstition and mythical creatures, you should know that
there are psychologists, intelligence agency analysts and a jailed
Yaktusk wizard out there who would beg to differ.
“Putin and his entourage take the spirit world very seriously,” says a
Kremlin official who requested anonymity to ensure his security,
navigating what some insiders maintain is the Russian President’s
Twilight Zone. “It’s not a big leap of faith for a Russian to think
Putin will do what’s necessary to destroy anyone looking to exorcize
the imaginary demons who they believe give him power.”
The question is, do you believe that primal evil spirits, concocted to
panic delusory serfs, have entranced the 70-year-old Putin into
slaughtering Ukrainians and threatening nuclear war against the West?
Anna Moroz, who’s spent a decade counseling Russian emigres mystified
about how to accustom themselves to the West’s secular ways, is about
as certain of it as any clinical psychologist can be under the
circumstances.
“Legendary stories play a formidable role in our national psychology
and are without doubt animating Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” the
Russian-born Moroz explains, speaking to The Daily Beast under an
assumed name for fear of reprisals. “The technical term is paradoxical
thinking, but I certainly don’t believe reports that the man-snake
Koschei Bessmertny is advising Putin from a grotto beneath the
Kremlin.”
Gulp.
But let’s first get a grip on the current geopolitical reality before
stepping into another dimension of sight and sound and mind—and
Russia’s indigenous Voldemort, who was last spotted assisting Rus’
Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest capture Kyiv in 1203, according to
the Tale of Igor’s Campaign.
Russia is a land of riddles Western leaders have spent centuries
trying to untangle. The most pressing enigma right now is how to
prevent an increasingly isolated Putin from triggering a radioactive
holocaust while, at the same time, supplying Ukraine with all the
weapons it needs to defeat him without further exacerbating the most
vicious and devastating European conflict since World War II.
“It’s like sitting here in 1942 trying to profile Hitler, who also
believed in mumbo jumbo,” says a U.S. intelligence analyst who
profiles Putin. “You can’t take it seriously, but you must take it
into consideration.”
To be sure, Putin is a tsar by vocation, a KGB major by rank and,
Moroz says, a “dark trickster” by disposition. “He fits all of
Russia’s paranormal stereotypes. Her diagnosis: “Putin is attracted to
the idea that supernatural forces anointed him as the Chosen One,”
Moroz says.
“Putin hates democracy because he doesn’t believe in human powers,”
she adds. “He believes spirits have anointed him with sacred
autocratic powers.”
Ethereal or otherwise, the UN Human Rights Council says Putin’s power
in Ukraine has so far resulted in his army torturing, raping and
executing hundreds of Ukrainian men, women and children.
“Based on the evidence gathered by the Commission,” the UN report
reads, “it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in
Ukraine.”
An official in one of Russia’s ministries tells The Daily Beast that
speculation on whether hocus-pocus is the motivational force behind
Putin’s Ukrainian bloodbath is real inside Russia. “He sees the West
as weak because it has too many rules that interfere with his power,”
the official says. “Ridiculous stories about demons giving him power
are nonetheless psychologically concrete. Demons don’t abide by
rules.”
A 2016 poll conducted by the All Russia Public Opinion Research Center
perhaps best illustrates what a Western profiler described as Putin’s
“wraith-like personality.” The survey showed 36 percent of the
population believe in supernatural beings, with one in four
respondents finding it difficult to answer the question. “Although a
relative majority of Russians say they don’t believe in witchcraft,”
pollster Ivan Lekonstev concluded, “many are familiar with at least
stereotyped and mythological views of it.”
“Like all fairytale demons, Putin will simply vanish.”
The self-described Siberian “Shaman-Warrior” Sasha Gabyshev claims
he’s spent a lifetime struggling against a demonic entity that haunts
the Russian president, the fabled Russian villain Koschei
Bessmertny—also known as The Immortal and The Walking Skeleton. In the
autumn of 2019, the Shaman-Warrior of Yakutia his followers set off on
a two-year, 5,000-mile march to Moscow, where Gabyshev vowed to use
his magic sword to slay the beast beneath the Kremlin and exorcise its
terror from Putin’s soul.
Picking up supporters and news conferences along the way, Gabyshev’s
soothsayers were at first attacked by a coven of pro-Putin shamans in
the city of Ulan-Ude. Battling on, the sorcerer and his apprentices
made it as far as Lake Baikal, where their arrest was televised.
Gabyshev was carted off to a mental hospital.
“Putin is scared,” was now jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s
response to the mystical melee that put Gabyshev behind bars. “Putin
is already stomping his feet and shouting, ‘God save me from this
shaman. What if he really does banish me?’”
Moroz says Navalny’s question remains valid. “I’m sure Putin was
terrified,” Moroz says. “He staged a major police operation against
Gabyshev. The shaman had nothing against Putin. His goal was to remove
the demon from beneath the Kremlin and free Putin’s stolen soul. It’s
a powerful and accurate metaphor that resonates with all Russians.”
Those who jobwise Putin for Western intelligence agencies are hardly a
bunch of humorless stiffs. “But when we stopped laughing,” says one,
“we concluded that Putin’s fear of Gabyshev was palpable.”
Still, professional spooks who are skeptical about Russian fairytale
characters exerting control over Putin treat the issue with the
delicateness of briefing Congress on Santa Claus. “Hard to forecast
the result if a significant number of Russians would have gone along
with the shaman,” the analyst says. “Gabyshev’s followers attracted
many Russians who live far outside the cities, a grassroots movement
with a conceivable potential to help destabilize Russia’s consensus
that supports Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine.”
Kremlin-watchers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
concur. “Putin seems to view Gabyshev as a genuine threat,” said
Hoover Research Fellow Dr. Paul Gregory, who’s held visiting teaching
posts at Moscow State University and is the former director of the
Russian Petroleum Legislation Project at the University of Houston.
Valery Solovey, who’s trained many members of Putin’s ambassadorial
corps at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and
served as the prestigious school’s director of public relations,
either knows a thing or two about the black arts of Russian diplomacy
or is dafter than a borscht sandwich. As the professor tells it, Putin
once commanded Kremlin sorcerers to ritualistically kill a black dog
so he could drink the blood to ensure a crushing victory in Ukraine.
When that dog didn’t hunt, Solovey claimed that Putin ordered all the
magicians’ heads cut off and displayed in front of their homes.
Back in reality, the governor of Russia’s Primorsky region, which
includes Vladivostok, last week said between 200,000 and 600,000 men
have fled the country to avoid Putin’s war against Ukraine. At the
same time, the independent Russian media outlet SOTA reported that
police in Moscow and surrounding regions are raiding offices, hostels
and restaurants to indiscriminately corral men for mobilization.
Despite the optimistic omens, the deadly matter of whether Putin will
launch nuclear weapons remains the biggest unanswered question among
Western diplomats and military strategists. Although Ukraine and its
allies must brace themselves for the worst, Moroz’s psychological
profile of Putin concludes he won’t pull the trigger.
“Like all fairytale demons, Putin will simply vanish, and be replaced
by a politburo to solve the hardships of the war in Ukraine,” Moroz
reckons. “The arrogant illusion of an all-powerful Russian
exceptionalism has been disproved, myth broken. Russia’s leaders must
sober up, grow up, and acculturate themselves to the modern world.”
Source:
https://t.co/NXkGtXOEuU
or
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-superstitious-beliefs-sending-vladimir-putin-wild-in-russias-war-on-ukraine>
The Russian president’s flair for the superstitious may be deeper—and
deadlier–than we think.
A. Craig Copetas
Published in The Daily Beast, Oct. 22, 2022 11:14PM ET
https://t.co/NXkGtXOEuU
If you suspect that Vladimir Putin’s decision-making process is above
the creed of superstition and mythical creatures, you should know that
there are psychologists, intelligence agency analysts and a jailed
Yaktusk wizard out there who would beg to differ.
“Putin and his entourage take the spirit world very seriously,” says a
Kremlin official who requested anonymity to ensure his security,
navigating what some insiders maintain is the Russian President’s
Twilight Zone. “It’s not a big leap of faith for a Russian to think
Putin will do what’s necessary to destroy anyone looking to exorcize
the imaginary demons who they believe give him power.”
The question is, do you believe that primal evil spirits, concocted to
panic delusory serfs, have entranced the 70-year-old Putin into
slaughtering Ukrainians and threatening nuclear war against the West?
Anna Moroz, who’s spent a decade counseling Russian emigres mystified
about how to accustom themselves to the West’s secular ways, is about
as certain of it as any clinical psychologist can be under the
circumstances.
“Legendary stories play a formidable role in our national psychology
and are without doubt animating Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” the
Russian-born Moroz explains, speaking to The Daily Beast under an
assumed name for fear of reprisals. “The technical term is paradoxical
thinking, but I certainly don’t believe reports that the man-snake
Koschei Bessmertny is advising Putin from a grotto beneath the
Kremlin.”
Gulp.
But let’s first get a grip on the current geopolitical reality before
stepping into another dimension of sight and sound and mind—and
Russia’s indigenous Voldemort, who was last spotted assisting Rus’
Grand Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest capture Kyiv in 1203, according to
the Tale of Igor’s Campaign.
Russia is a land of riddles Western leaders have spent centuries
trying to untangle. The most pressing enigma right now is how to
prevent an increasingly isolated Putin from triggering a radioactive
holocaust while, at the same time, supplying Ukraine with all the
weapons it needs to defeat him without further exacerbating the most
vicious and devastating European conflict since World War II.
“It’s like sitting here in 1942 trying to profile Hitler, who also
believed in mumbo jumbo,” says a U.S. intelligence analyst who
profiles Putin. “You can’t take it seriously, but you must take it
into consideration.”
To be sure, Putin is a tsar by vocation, a KGB major by rank and,
Moroz says, a “dark trickster” by disposition. “He fits all of
Russia’s paranormal stereotypes. Her diagnosis: “Putin is attracted to
the idea that supernatural forces anointed him as the Chosen One,”
Moroz says.
“Putin hates democracy because he doesn’t believe in human powers,”
she adds. “He believes spirits have anointed him with sacred
autocratic powers.”
Ethereal or otherwise, the UN Human Rights Council says Putin’s power
in Ukraine has so far resulted in his army torturing, raping and
executing hundreds of Ukrainian men, women and children.
“Based on the evidence gathered by the Commission,” the UN report
reads, “it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in
Ukraine.”
An official in one of Russia’s ministries tells The Daily Beast that
speculation on whether hocus-pocus is the motivational force behind
Putin’s Ukrainian bloodbath is real inside Russia. “He sees the West
as weak because it has too many rules that interfere with his power,”
the official says. “Ridiculous stories about demons giving him power
are nonetheless psychologically concrete. Demons don’t abide by
rules.”
A 2016 poll conducted by the All Russia Public Opinion Research Center
perhaps best illustrates what a Western profiler described as Putin’s
“wraith-like personality.” The survey showed 36 percent of the
population believe in supernatural beings, with one in four
respondents finding it difficult to answer the question. “Although a
relative majority of Russians say they don’t believe in witchcraft,”
pollster Ivan Lekonstev concluded, “many are familiar with at least
stereotyped and mythological views of it.”
“Like all fairytale demons, Putin will simply vanish.”
The self-described Siberian “Shaman-Warrior” Sasha Gabyshev claims
he’s spent a lifetime struggling against a demonic entity that haunts
the Russian president, the fabled Russian villain Koschei
Bessmertny—also known as The Immortal and The Walking Skeleton. In the
autumn of 2019, the Shaman-Warrior of Yakutia his followers set off on
a two-year, 5,000-mile march to Moscow, where Gabyshev vowed to use
his magic sword to slay the beast beneath the Kremlin and exorcise its
terror from Putin’s soul.
Picking up supporters and news conferences along the way, Gabyshev’s
soothsayers were at first attacked by a coven of pro-Putin shamans in
the city of Ulan-Ude. Battling on, the sorcerer and his apprentices
made it as far as Lake Baikal, where their arrest was televised.
Gabyshev was carted off to a mental hospital.
“Putin is scared,” was now jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s
response to the mystical melee that put Gabyshev behind bars. “Putin
is already stomping his feet and shouting, ‘God save me from this
shaman. What if he really does banish me?’”
Moroz says Navalny’s question remains valid. “I’m sure Putin was
terrified,” Moroz says. “He staged a major police operation against
Gabyshev. The shaman had nothing against Putin. His goal was to remove
the demon from beneath the Kremlin and free Putin’s stolen soul. It’s
a powerful and accurate metaphor that resonates with all Russians.”
Those who jobwise Putin for Western intelligence agencies are hardly a
bunch of humorless stiffs. “But when we stopped laughing,” says one,
“we concluded that Putin’s fear of Gabyshev was palpable.”
Still, professional spooks who are skeptical about Russian fairytale
characters exerting control over Putin treat the issue with the
delicateness of briefing Congress on Santa Claus. “Hard to forecast
the result if a significant number of Russians would have gone along
with the shaman,” the analyst says. “Gabyshev’s followers attracted
many Russians who live far outside the cities, a grassroots movement
with a conceivable potential to help destabilize Russia’s consensus
that supports Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine.”
Kremlin-watchers at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University
concur. “Putin seems to view Gabyshev as a genuine threat,” said
Hoover Research Fellow Dr. Paul Gregory, who’s held visiting teaching
posts at Moscow State University and is the former director of the
Russian Petroleum Legislation Project at the University of Houston.
Valery Solovey, who’s trained many members of Putin’s ambassadorial
corps at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and
served as the prestigious school’s director of public relations,
either knows a thing or two about the black arts of Russian diplomacy
or is dafter than a borscht sandwich. As the professor tells it, Putin
once commanded Kremlin sorcerers to ritualistically kill a black dog
so he could drink the blood to ensure a crushing victory in Ukraine.
When that dog didn’t hunt, Solovey claimed that Putin ordered all the
magicians’ heads cut off and displayed in front of their homes.
Back in reality, the governor of Russia’s Primorsky region, which
includes Vladivostok, last week said between 200,000 and 600,000 men
have fled the country to avoid Putin’s war against Ukraine. At the
same time, the independent Russian media outlet SOTA reported that
police in Moscow and surrounding regions are raiding offices, hostels
and restaurants to indiscriminately corral men for mobilization.
Despite the optimistic omens, the deadly matter of whether Putin will
launch nuclear weapons remains the biggest unanswered question among
Western diplomats and military strategists. Although Ukraine and its
allies must brace themselves for the worst, Moroz’s psychological
profile of Putin concludes he won’t pull the trigger.
“Like all fairytale demons, Putin will simply vanish, and be replaced
by a politburo to solve the hardships of the war in Ukraine,” Moroz
reckons. “The arrogant illusion of an all-powerful Russian
exceptionalism has been disproved, myth broken. Russia’s leaders must
sober up, grow up, and acculturate themselves to the modern world.”
Source:
https://t.co/NXkGtXOEuU
or
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-superstitious-beliefs-sending-vladimir-putin-wild-in-russias-war-on-ukraine>
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
For information about why crossposting is (usually) good, and multiposting (nearly always) bad, see:
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm#xpost
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
For information about why crossposting is (usually) good, and multiposting (nearly always) bad, see:
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/unice.htm#xpost