More details on Alexander Gabyshev, the anti-Putin shaman:
“Armed security services blocked the highway, quickly encircled our camp and headed straight to the shaman’s tent,” Viktor Yegorov, one of Gabyshev’s supporters, said in a video from the scene. “They drove him off in an unknown direction.”
According to the latest reports, he has been released for a day but must check into a psychiatric clinic for an examination. Unsurprisingly, human rights activists have compared this to “the Soviet-era practice of placing dissidents in psychiatric clinics.”
As I’ve said, I suspect that some members of the Kremlin gang are literally afraid of falling pray to sorcery and witchcraft. The saner ones have a defensible reason for concern:
Gabyshev has covered more than 2,000 kilometers on foot and during his walk has talked with hundreds of truck drivers and others as he kept gaining notoriety. Videos of the talks have shown up on social media with millions of views.
Truck drivers have protested more than once in the “post-Crimean” years – i.e., since 2014. See reports from 2015, 2017, and 2019. This may go some way towards explaining the “armed security services” dispatched to seize the mighty shaman.