Fate on Commission: How the kremlin recruited the stars

22.10.2026

Anna-Maria Vaskovskaja, media literacy specialist (RaRa). Edited with the help of AI.

Most people who open a horoscope want to know about love, money or what the coming month holds. They are not expecting a briefing on the war in Ukraine. A new undercover investigation on The Christo Files suggests that some of Russia’s best-known astrologers are giving them one anyway, and that some are willing to tailor it to order.

The investigation is the work of two journalists who have spent years tracking Russian influence.

Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian, made his name as Bellingcat’s lead Russia investigator. His team identified the suspects in the 2018 Skripal poisoning, work that won a European Press Prize, and helped establish how Alexei Navalny was poisoned in 2020. Russia declared him wanted in December 2022. Since November 2024 he has run The Christo Files on YouTube.

Tatsiana Ashurkevich is a Belarusian investigative journalist and political analyst now based in London. She covers disinformation and the networks authoritarian states use to spread their influence. She has reported from Ukraine, written for Politico, The Guardian and Tagesspiegel, and was a 2025 Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Fellow. She has been uprooted twice, leaving Belarus in 2021, and then Ukraine when the full-scale war began.

This time they went after a less obvious target: the people who claim to read the future, and whoever might be writing their scripts.

Three tests, one pattern

It began with a message. In June, a friend in Russia sent Ashurkevich a link to an ordinary astrology channel on Telegram, as she recounts in the video. One post predicted that Zelensky would be Ukraine’s last president, that Ukraine would lose the war and that Putin would lead Russia to success. Other channels said much the same: Zelensky is weak, Putin is strong and almost messianic, Europe is falling apart. These were the Kremlin’s everyday talking points, and at times, Ashurkevich says, they appeared suspiciously in sync.

Why were people who usually talk about love and relationships suddenly talking about geopolitics? In Russia, astrology is mainstream, and astrologers with large followings are regular guests on state television, where Putin’s critics are not invited. Ashurkevich decided to find out whether the stars or the state were setting the agenda.

She drew up a list of astrologers who often comment on politics in state media, went through what they had said on air, and then called them posing as a TV producer. She suggested the request came from higher up and asked for content that praised Putin, attacked Zelensky and framed the war the ‘right way’.

She spoke to seven astrologers: V. Hubelashvili, A. Zaraev, K. Dyatlova, M. Levin, S. Dragan, K. Medvedeva and K. Zaripova. According to the investigation, several were remarkably candid.

Dyatlova, who runs her own astrology school and had appeared on propaganda outlets before, said she had no moral problem with the request. She also named Zaraev as someone who works with state media in exactly this way.
Zaraev, one of Russia’s best-known astrologers, said this kind of work was nothing new to him. He called himself a true Russian and said he was surprised Putin had not started the war earlier.
Dragan asked about the fee first, and said she had been paid around 1 million roubles for several television appearances.
Levin said he felt that what Putin is doing in Ukraine matches Russia’s destiny.
Hubelashvili said that just before one broadcast on state TV, someone told her what she must not say and read out a list of banned words.

Then came the final test: would the astrologers build a forecast from a script? Grozev and Ashurkevich invented a backstory in which Grozev was an enemy of Putin, driven by money and somehow linked to France, a country they picked at random. The money motive was deliberate: Grozev says Russian propaganda has accused him for years of working for Western intelligence services to enrich himself. They also added a young woman at his side who carries on his work. That woman was meant to be Ashurkevich.

The astrologers turned the invented story into forecasts. One explained the French connection by noting that Grozev shares a zodiac sign with Macron and that both love money. During a Zoom call, one astrologer read the story back to Ashurkevich, who had joined as the producer with her camera off. He had no idea that the woman he was describing was on the other end of the line. As Ashurkevich puts it in the video, she knew exactly where his words had come from: “They came from me.”

That last test is the most revealing. If astrology could really disclose anything, it would not have confirmed a story invented in every detail. Their explanation is simpler. Like the presenters on Russia’s political talk shows, these astrologers are given a general direction and know what is expected of them.

“In Russia, going off script has consequences, so the script spreads.” — from Tarot: Putin’s secret weapon, The Christo Files

A wider pattern

None of this comes out of nowhere. Journalists and researchers have been documenting the overlap between Russian esotericism and state messaging since the full-scale invasion began.

Psychics moved onto state television early. In February 2023, The Insider reported that astrologers, tarot readers and psychics had become regular guests on political talk shows, forecasting the course of the war, Russia’s future and Putin’s leadership. In the second half of January 2023, 11 of the 16 episodes of Rossiya-1’s Malakhov that made the national top 100 were about the supernatural. NTV’s New Russian Sensations ran episodes with titles such as “Stars against Zelensky” and “Zelensky’s Goddess of Death”. One guest, introduced as a former KGB “combat psychic”, predicted that Zelensky would surrender in autumn 2022.

The readings echo familiar talking points. Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication collected Russian tarot readings that “foresaw” Ukrainian regional centres becoming part of Russia, Russia having unnamed secret allies abroad, and Britain planning military bases in Ukraine.

The audience is large and still growing. In a January 2026 poll by the state pollster VTsIOM, 85% of Russians said they had tried at least one mystical practice, and 52% had read horoscopes or consulted an astrologer. Reuters reported in April 2026 that nearly half of Russians now believe some people can predict the future, up from under a third in 2019; VTsIOM itself put the rise down to geopolitical and economic anxiety. In 2024, Russians spent nearly 2 billion roubles on tarot decks on the major online marketplaces, almost twice as much as the year before, according to Forbes figures cited by Russia Post.

The war also opened a market for political readings. Citing Vedomosti, The Moscow Times reported that the audience of online tarot and magic schools grew almost twentyfold in the first year of the invasion. One course, “Wartime Tarot Reader”, promised to teach readers how to answer clients’ questions about mobilisation, war and emigration. A tarot reader the paper interviewed said he had come from marketing and switched to geopolitical readings because they bring in followers quickly.

Russia is not the only place where the war has been read in the stars. Ukrainian astrologers have made confident predictions too: in a February 2023 interview with the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, as saying Putin would not live past March 2023. What sets the Grozev–Ashurkevich investigation apart is direct evidence of how such readings are produced: astrologers who described taking direction from Russian state media, and forecasts written to order from a story the journalists invented.

Why astrologers make good messengers

Propaganda works best when people have their guard down, and few formats catch them more off guard than a horoscope. Three things make it especially useful.

The first is trust. Followers tend to see an astrologer as a channel for something bigger, not as a person with an employer or an agenda. A political claim presented as fate doesn’t look like a claim at all, and the investigators argue that this assumed neutrality is exactly what makes the disinformation so hard to spot.

The second is intimacy. The message arrives in a format designed for comfort and guidance, often speaking directly to “you”, tucked between advice on relationships and money. Few people expect to be persuaded about a war there.

The third is uncertainty. Psychologist Veronika Neifakh told The Moscow Times that when uncertainty drags on, people reach for any source of certainty, and magical thinking follows. VTsIOM made the same connection in its 2026 survey.

The technique itself is old. Historian Monica Black, cited by The Insider, describes how Goebbels had his staff post anonymous prophecies of Germany’s final victory as the war turned against it. Today’s version simply travels further, through Telegram, YouTube and prime-time television.

How to read the readers

You don’t need to decide whether astrology works to notice when it is being put to work. A few questions go a long way.

Has a personal channel suddenly turned political? If a feed that used to cover love and careers starts talking about borders, leaders and wars, especially right after big news, take note.
Who wins in every reading? When one leader is always strong, one country always failing and one bloc always about to collapse, the reading tells you more about whose side it is on than about the future.
Does it echo familiar talking points? Check the claims against EUvsDisinfo or Propastop. A close match is a warning sign.
Who gives the messenger a platform? Russian state television does not invite people who step outside its line. A regular guest has accepted its rules.
Is it trying to scare you or sell you something? Urgent warnings, calls to avoid places or people, and links to paid readings, courses or amulets are signs that the forecast has a purpose.
Did the old predictions come true? Forecasts of Zelensky’s surrender in 2022 and Putin’s death by Easter 2023 are on the record. Few channels ever go back to them.

The lesson reaches well beyond Russia. Disinformation travels most easily through spaces built on trust, the places where we haven’t yet learned to ask who is talking, and why.

You can watch the full investigation, “Tarot: Putin’s secret weapon”, on The Christo Files.