Shaman's long march: Alexander Gabyshev's battle with the Kremlin

The story of the self-proclaimed Siberian shaman who repeatedly attempted to march to Moscow is again making headlines. He claimed he needed to perform exorcisms on Putin, and the Kremlin took his declarations surprisingly seriously. What happened to Alexander Gabyshev?

Alexander Gabyshev came into the spotlight a few years ago. The self-proclaimed shaman from Siberia was not afraid to criticize Vladimir Putin. As the portal "Super Express" reports, this criticism took a rather surprising form. In 2018, he began his march to the Kremlin, where he wanted to perform exorcisms on Vladimir Putin. After covering 1,860 miles, his march ended when the authorities detained him.

This did not cool the shaman’s enthusiasm. He made further attempts to march to Moscow in 2020 and 2021. The Kremlin authorities reacted to his actions in a rather surprising way. Although few people took the self-proclaimed shaman’s declarations seriously, Vladimir Putin seemed to treat them with surprising seriousness, a point even noted by Alexei Navalny.

The last march to Moscow by Gabyshev ended with him being sent to a closed psychiatric ward in one of the Russian hospitals, where he reportedly remains to this day. This followed accusations that he attacked a police officer. His story occasionally resurfaces in the media, most recently due to a documentary film "The Shaman’s Novel," directed by Beata Bubenets.

The documentary mentioned indicates that the Siberian Shaman predicted the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. "People, new times have come. Everything will be transformed. This year, the worldview of all people on Earth will change," the newspaper quotes his words. The director of the documentary emphasized that the pandemic has completely changed our reality and our perception of it. That’s why Beata Bubenets considered his words prophetic.

And what did the Siberian Shaman say about Putin? Gabyshev argued that where "Putin is, there are always disasters, terror, and wars." He added that Putin is a demon and "not from Earth."