Russia detains shaman on mission to ‘banish Putin’

Russian police yesterday said they had detained a Siberian shaman walking to Moscow on a mission to drive out President Vladimir Putin who he describes as a “demon”. Police in the eastern Siberian region of Buryatia said they had detained the shaman, Alexander Gabyshev, on a highway near Lake Baikal and would send him 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 some 5,000 kilometres (3,000 miles), has seen a group of followers join him on the way. Gabyshev began walking in March. He planned to reach Moscow in 2021. Shamanism is still practised in numerous regions of Russia.