Here’s how mysticism and witchcraft fueled Ukraine’s war mindset
By Marina Akhmedova, member of the presidential human rights council of Russia
© This image was generated using AI technology.
[RT] Yulia
Mendel, former press secretary to Vladimir Zelensky, has made claims
that would once have sounded like tabloid fantasy. Yet in today’s
Ukraine, they land differently. Mendel says that Andrey Yermak, long the
powerful head of the presidential office, allegedly sought help from
magicians. People who, she claims, gathered water from corpses, burned
herbs, and performed rituals.
She says she first heard whispers of
this in 2019. After a briefing, a journalist did not chase the then new
president for comments but repeatedly asked Yermak what he had been
doing at a cemetery. He ignored the question. A year later, a minister
confided to Mendel that Yermak was “into magic.” By 2023, someone from an “important service” told her he supposedly kept a “chest of the dead.” These were dolls made by magicians from Latin America, Israel, and Georgia. That chest, she says, was already “filled with the dead.” Interpret that as you wish.
Mendel
added that Yermak is not unique. Magical thinking, she suggested, is
widespread among Ukrainian elites. That may sound exaggerated, but
anyone who has travelled through western Ukraine knows mysticism is
deeply rooted there. I once toured the Lviv region and the Carpathians
out of sociological curiosity. In village after village, people spoke of
a neighbor who was “a witch,” able to make children fall ill
or cows stop giving milk with a single glance. They feared her, yet
sought her out at night to cast spells against enemies.
Once, during a packed church holiday service, this “witch”
entered. I saw people faint. Later I learned she had come for holy water
and candles to place in graves. It was not her own idea, but at the
request of a devout villager who had been praying moments before. The
pattern was clear: society appoints a witch, fears her, and uses her.
Church by day, spells by night. Both yours and ours.
This mindset
is not confined to rural backwaters. It permeates Ukrainian culture.
Soviet-era Ukrainian art reflected it. Folk songs spoke of witches
cursing enemies. Even modern “social advertising” featured Lviv
actresses dressed as witches, theatrically beheading men. Such imagery
takes root only in a society comfortable with pagan mysticism.
If
Mendel is right, Zelensky’s circle did not even limit itself to local
traditions. Latin American shamanism, with its animal sacrifices and
bone-and-flesh talismans, is far removed from Gogol’s Ukraine. To seek
out such practices suggests obsession, not folklore.
Three conclusions follow.
First,
this worldview reframes the conflict. From this perspective, Ukraine’s
human losses are not simply tragic necessity, but offerings. They are
sacrifices to dark forces in exchange for power. The language of clergy
about a struggle between light and darkness takes on a literal meaning.
Second, it explains the Kiev elite’s almost mystical faith in
victory. The military situation worsens, people flee mobilization
centers, cities endure blackouts, yet Zelensky insists the outcome will
match his wishes. On what is that certainty based? Not on the front
line, but on promises from sorcerers. So much blood has been spilled
that, in this logic, the “contract” must be fulfilled.
Third,
this sheds light on the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
Witchcraft demands a turning away from God. True, many in western
Ukraine manage both church and spells, but the state campaign against
canonical Orthodoxy goes further. It reflects a ruling class that has
chosen mysticism over faith.
Mendel’s stories, whether literal or
metaphorical, capture something essential: a political culture where
rational calculation yields to magical thinking. Leaders who believe in
talismans and rituals may also believe that history bends to willpower
alone.
Yet even in these tales, there is irony. The dark forces
did not save Yermak’s career. Power slipped. If the chest of the dead
exists, it contains only symbols now. Let’s say dolls, not destiny.
And
Zelensky? Mendel’s account leaves us with a grim image: a leader who
once played a clown on television, now presiding over real tragedy,
trusting not in diplomacy or realism, but in spells. A clown doll in a
box of the dead.