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Moscow Times
December 31, 2004
Instability, Amnesty for Yukos Boss in '05
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer

Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be amnestied by December, Mikhail Fradkov's Cabinet will be sacked in the spring and people will come out of the woodwork to join President Vladimir Putin's team in Kremlin.

True or not, fortune tellers' predictions for 2005 reflect a disappointment in the ideals of a free market, a desire for a caring social state and widespread public trust in Putin, who has gained almost supernatural powers in the eyes of many people.

"2005 is the year of both the Blue Wooden Rooster and the White Wolf, meaning that good and evil will be desperately fighting against each other," Yury Longo, one of the country's best-known fortune tellers, said Thursday.

Russia will pass through a period of political instability that will result in the emergence of a new political elite, he said. "These will be totally new faces -- dark horses like Putin himself was several years ago," he said, adding that Putin's popularity will remain high in 2005.

The volatile period will begin in April or early May and will force the dismissal of the Cabinet and a change in Russia's economic course, renowned astrologer Alexander Zarayev said.

"The new government will strive to accommodate the interests of a larger segment of the population than the current one does now," he said. "The new Cabinet will most probably do this by strengthening the state's control over the economy and increasing its paternalist approach toward society."

Putin -- whose zodiac sign is Libra -- will find himself weighing his options as both a man and president in the second half of 2005, said Zarayev, who is Izvestia's staff astrologer. At the same time, cosmic forces will set off a huge economic and political crisis in Ukraine -- but Putin will find a way to handle the situation that will secure a stable future for himself, Russia and Ukraine, he said.

Zarayev recalled that in 1990 Khodorkovsky, then a rising star of nascent Russian capitalism, had invited him to draw up his horoscope, and that he had predicted that the wealth and power of the man who later became Russia's richest billionaire would grow until 2002 and then collapse. Khodorkovsky was jailed in 2003 and is now on trial on fraud and tax evasion charges.

"He will be released in the second half of 2005," Zarayev said.

Another astrologer, Sergei Pimenov, who is not connected to Zarayev, was more precise in his forecast of the fate of Yukos' founder. "Khodorkovsky will be amnestied next December," he said.

Pimenov also predicted a shakeup of the political elite, but said this could happen as early as February. He promised additional political turmoil in August -- perhaps the most unlucky month in post-Soviet history. During that month, the ruble collapsed in 1998, the second Chechen war began in 1999, the Kursk nuclear submarine sank and the Ostankino television tower caught fire in 2000, and a military helicopter crashed killing more than 100 people in 2002. A series of terrorist attacks that killed more than 400 people started in August this year.

Pimenov said August 2005 will see a power crisis followed by public upheaval, but Putin will settle the crisis by changing the government's political and economic course.

Despite political instability, the economy will do fine as oil prices stay high and the ruble rate remains steady, the three astrologists agreed.

"And don't expect that we will start producing good cars and watches in Russia," Longo said.