Russia arrests Siberian shaman Alexander Gabyshev on 8,000km trek to expel ‘demon’ Vladimir Putin
- Shaman’s eccentric bid to walk from home city of Yakutsk to Moscow drew crowd of supporters along the way
- Gabyshev was reportedly snatched from camp in the night by masked security officers
Russian police on Thursday said they had detained a Siberian shaman trekking towards Moscow on a mission to expel “demon” President Vladimir Putin, picking up a crowd of supporters on the way.
Police in the eastern Siberian region of Buryatia told Interfax they had detained the shaman, Alexander Gabyshev, on a highway near Lake Baikal and would put him on a flight back to his home region where he is “wanted for committing a crime”.
Gabyshev’s eccentric bid to walk from his home city of Yakutsk to Moscow, a distance of more than 8,000km (5,000 miles), has seen a group of followers join him on the way.
His simply expressed statements about Putin captured public attention, prompting opposition protests as well as a sharp response from the authorities and muckraking reports on pro-Kremlin television.
“God said that he’s a demon,” Gabyshev told the TV Rain channel in July. “Nature doesn’t like him. Where he is, there are cataclysms and acts of terror.”