The Russian State Duma, in a performance equal parts authoritarian comedy and medieval pageantry, has decided the real threat to society isn’t corruption, war crimes, or state-sanctioned murder. It’s witches. And tarot cards. And, heaven forbid, someone reading your horoscope over herbal tea. The new legislative proposal to ban the advertising of “esoteric services” confirms once again that the Kremlin has exhausted all pretense of governance and now flails wildly in the shallow pool of cultural hysteria and control. Somewhere between missile strikes on civilian infrastructure and rewriting textbooks to glorify Stalin, lawmakers now feel threatened by astrology memes.
Nina Ostanina and her cohort of legislative clowns parade this nonsense as a moral crusade against deception. That claim is rich coming from a government that lies about dead children in Mariupol, poisons dissidents, and edits reality on state TV with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Fraud? The only thing defrauding the Russian people is the Duma’s addiction to distraction. Rather than address a collapsing economy, sanctions strangling innovation, and soldiers coming home in zinc boxes, they declare war on crystal healing and lucid dreaming.
The supposed “danger” of spiritual advisors, tarot readers, and bioenergy therapists apparently eclipses the existential rot hollowing out Russia’s institutions. That makes sense in a country where magic thinking isn’t just tolerated—it’s a requirement for surviving state propaganda. Putin’s entire regime floats on the same delusional plane as the charlatans being targeted. Both offer false hope, fake power, and fantastical promises. The difference? Putin drops bombs. Tarot readers drop vague platitudes and incense.
Of course, the bill carves out an exception for those with “higher education in a related field.” Translation: if you’re credentialed by a system that turns history into fan fiction and science into state loyalty pledges, then your magical nonsense is safe. Otherwise, prepare for censorship. The hypocrisy is almost admirable in its precision—ban what threatens centralized control, but bless what reinforces it. Like every law born from this paranoid legislature, the goal isn’t to protect the public. It’s to smother thought, regulate belief, and remind citizens that only the state may tell them what is real, what is sacred, and what is permitted.
Russia isn’t banning pseudoscience. It’s consolidating its monopoly on it. The real danger to Russian society has never been the astrologer predicting Mercury in retrograde. It’s the regime, forever drunk on its own mythology, scapegoating the harmless while ignoring the horrors it creates daily. This law doesn’t target deception. It is deception. Just like the system enforcing it.
We See What Others Cannot
