Svetlana Lada-Rus tried to break into politics and become president - and also believed in reptilians and the Masonic conspiracy. Andrei Pertsev tells the story of a “healer” from the 1990s who criticized Putin for mobilization and ended up on the list of “foreign agents”

By Andrey Pertsev 

meduza.io

13 min

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“It was such a post-Kashpirov time”

Svetlana Peunova was born in Samara in 1958 (then the city was called Kuibyshev), studied there at  a music school , and then at  a pedagogical institute . After graduation, Peunova worked in Samara music and general education schools, and in the early 1990s she became interested in entrepreneurship and completed marketing courses at the city employment service. At the same time, the music teacher mastered bioenergy under the guidance of the healer Juna , who conducted five-day courses in Samara, and then studied with the Ukrainian clairvoyant Albert Ignatenko .

Svetlana Peunova began accepting Samara residents who wanted to recover from illnesses without medical intervention in 1995 in a “plywood office” (as she herself called it) in the lobby of the Samara railway clinic (now the Russian Railways Medicine clinical hospital). She called her practice “drug-free health restoration.” Peunova argued : “Any chronic disease is a consequence of some negative character trait of a person, a product of his delusions.” Peunova “treated” her patients by “overcoming” these misconceptions and  listed her achievements:

Hearing loss, polyarthritis, hormonal disorders disappear, and the depression that torments many people also goes away. The character changes and, as a result, the microclimate in the family is harmonized. Alcohol and drug addictions disappear. Even the business sphere is normalizing. As one of our graduates said: “Poverty is also cured here.”

“She positioned herself as an “energy healer.” It was such a post-Kashpirovsky time in Russia: Anatoly Kashpirovsky and  Alan Chumak , popular during perestroika, at that time [by the mid-1990s] left television screens - but the demand for such “healing” among a certain audience remained,” he recalls in a conversation with Meduza reports a doctor from Samara familiar with Peunova who asked for anonymity.

According to him, queues quickly began to form to see the “energy healer”. She developed especially good relationships with women who found themselves in difficult situations - “abandoned, lonely, beaten by their husbands and cohabitants.”

Until 1996, it was not necessary to obtain licenses to practice medicine in Russia, but when they were introduced, Svetlana Peunova easily obtained a work permit from the regional health department. So the “plywood office” turned into a “folk medicine center” called “The Path to the Sun.”

The “center” is located in a small room belonging to the city hall. And when, in 1997, educational documents began to be required from managers and employees of numerous “medical centers,” Path to the Sun became a “training” place. The essence of his work did not change - Peunova continued to engage in “healing” - but officially they taught “helping yourself and your neighbors.”

During her classes, Peunova told the public that the root of all illnesses and difficulties is in psychological problems, which the “Path of the Sun” will help solve. The sessions were often held in cultural centers and assembly halls at enterprises and resembled the “healing” procedures that Russians had become accustomed to thanks to Chumak and Kashpirovsky.

“Kuzkina Natalya, [for] 10 years the diagnosis was kidney stones, kidney enlargement, kidney deformation in the shape of an hourglass. Two months later, the diagnosis was removed,” one of the participants in such meetings said from the stage. Another follower claimed that thanks to the knowledge gained at the Peunova center, she “helped her son restore his hearing.”

What distinguished Svetlana Peunova from an ordinary coach or pseudo-healer was the spiritual component of her “method”: she associated “restoration of health” with “compliance with the ethical principles of existence,” and called herself a spiritual leader who knows everything about these principles.

In 1998, Peunova founded the “professional medical Association of Traditional and Folk Medicine Specialists” - this sounded more respectable than a “training center” and helped the “energy healer” attract new supporters. In addition, she nevertheless received a diploma as a paramedic at the Samara Medical College named after Nina Lyapina and patented her “therapeutic” methods. One of them is described in the patent as follows:

The teacher establishes energetic contact with the student to create a single energy field by directing his energy flow towards the student. The teacher develops mental images of objects associated with the student’s negative feelings. The student, at the teacher’s suggestion, discovers these mental images in himself. Correction of the body's condition is carried out by mentally destroying images of these objects.

By the end of the 1990s, according to two Meduza interlocutors who worked in the regional administration, Peunova had several tens of thousands of followers throughout the Samara region. “Their main habitat was large industrial cities: Samara, Tolyatti, Syzran—where it was easier for followers to go around apartments in apartment buildings and talk about Peunova at their enterprises,” clarifies one of Meduza’s sources.

The “energy healer” gained even more followers after at the beginning of the 2000s she bought airtime on one of the Samara TV channels “RIO” and began hosting her own programs. At first, Peunova’s program was called “The ABC of Happiness”, in which the “healer” talked about her methods. Then the program was renamed  “What does Svetlana Peunova think?”  - and changed the subject. She began to talk on air about the socio-political situation in the Samara region and Russia as a whole.

“She was a constant irritant to the administration.”

A political strategist who in the late 1990s conducted campaigns for the legislative assembly and municipal councils in the Samara region, in a conversation with Meduza, recalls that Peunova offered her “services” to candidates and technologists:

She had a network of thousands of supporters who lured their acquaintances to her center. Peunova proposed using them as “agitators.” She called her followers “psychologists” who would go door to door and convince them to vote for candidates. And [regional politicians] used Peunova’s “services.”

The founder of “The Path of the Sun,” Meduza’s interlocutor continues, in personal communication made “an unusual impression,” and adds that “she did not call herself Lada-Russia at that time.” “She was very simple, but she made you feel like she had a certain aura - very powerful. Transparent blue eyes, slow body movements - it worked for the audience. At the same time, she had a clear goal - to earn money,” he says.

Both of Meduza’s interlocutors from the regional administration agree with him. According to them, Peunova was “a completely pragmatic person” who at first simply made money from her “admirers” and then realized that they could be used for political purposes.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Svetlana Peunova herself decided to go into politics: she ran for the State Duma, for mayor of Tolyatti, and for the Samara regional Duma several times. She was supported by a fairly large number of voters - usually about 10%. Both the Samara political strategist and a former official from the region claim that Peunova “did not spare money” for her campaigns - especially in the Tolyatti mayoral elections in 2004. But this did not help her win.

In 2006, the “energy healer” opened the “Svetlana Peunova Development Academy” in Samara. This organization already had a different official vector of work - the Academy was supposedly engaged in the “development” of clients, as well as training “coaches”. In fact, it was all the same “energy healing.”

At the same time, her entrepreneurial successes and political ambitions attracted the attention of local authorities to Peunova. “She was a constant irritating factor for the administration [of the Samara region] - at first very dangerous, because the people followed her. But over time, people understood everything, and the danger decreased,” a source who worked in the regional administration tells Meduza, adding that when the government in the region changed in 2007, Peunova began to be truly “squeezed.”

The Samara political strategist explains that the attitude of the regional administration towards Peunova changed after, instead of the liberal-minded Konstantin Titov, the region was headed in 2007 by a protege of the head of Rostec, Sergei Chemezov, and the former head of AvtoVAZ, Vladimir Artyakov. “Another acquaintance of Chemezov, Ivan Mironov, a native of the FSB, became Artyakov ’s deputy . He began to clear out “every living thing” in the region, including Peunova,” says Meduza’s interlocutor.

In 2008, searches were carried out at the Svetlana Peunova Development Academy , and a case was opened against its director Olga Sakhno for  illegal entrepreneurship  - however, it was quickly closed due to the lack of corpus delicti. That same year, Peunova again tried to run for mayor of Tolyatti, but she  was denied registration, allegedly due to incorrectly filled out documents.

Peunova’s next step in politics was her own party, Volya. On August 23, 2008, its founding congress was held in Samara. In the program, Volya members promised to “strongly oppose the ruling party,” and called “the revival of Russia as a free, powerful and prosperous power” as their goal. In 2011, the Ministry of Justice refused to register Volya - at that time, according to the law, the party had to consist of at least 50 thousand people; Peunova did not have that many supporters in the regions. 

“Only a Russian man defeated the Flying Serpent Gorynych”

At the same time, in the early 2010s, Svetlana Peunova developed a rather unusual hobby for a party leader - conspiracy theories. So, she unexpectedly announced that the planet is actually ruled by reptilians and their descendants. As Peunova herself admitted , thoughts about reptilians appeared during her vacation in Mexico, where she became acquainted with the culture of the Mayan tribe. According to Peunova, the Mayans themselves could not compile the calendar that made them famous due to a lack of knowledge in astronomy. The “energy healer” concluded that the tribe received the calendar from the reptilian aliens, among whom was the supreme Mayan god Kekulkan - the Indians depicted him in the form of a serpent. Peunova also saw traces of “alien intervention” in Sumerian culture.

Now she is convinced that the aliens demanded human sacrifices from earthlings as payment for their “services,” and calls the Mayan and Sumerian cultures “satanic.” The Mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin, in her opinion, is a “ziggurat” , and Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler are followers of an alien “satanic” cult who studied with the mystic and writer George Gurdjieff . Peunov calls Hitler “a contactee with aliens,” and Stalin’s repressions “sacrifices.” The “energy healer” argues her point of view by the fact that she has access to certain “secret documents.”

Peunova also criticizes the church. In her opinion, Sumerian rituals “are largely repeated in the [Christian] church, and this is also a historical fact.” She notes with regret that the “old Russian gods” were “ousted” from Russian territory by people who distorted the teachings of Christ. According to Peunova, the gods Kryshen and Vyshen, after the baptism of Russia, went to India and became Krishna and Vishnu, and the “energy healer” considers Sanskrit to be “the old Russian language.”

In addition, Peunova believes that the world is “ruled by America,” or more precisely by “Masonic societies” that obey the reptilians. “All the powerful of this world were Freemasons,” the “healer” is convinced. Russia, in her opinion, can fight this “alien influence”: “Only a Russian man defeated the Flying Serpent Gorynych.” Svetlana Peunova considers Maitreya  , the future incarnation of Buddha, to be her “teacher”.

In 2011, the “energy healer” stated that the planet Nibiru , which is inhabited by reptilians, is approaching the Earth - they, in her words, are “flying for their next victims.” Peunova referred to information on the Internet and a certain “KGB report from 1983”  - “serious people are used to believing” such documents, she emphasized.

Also, according to Peunova’s “data,” the “world government” plans to sharply reduce the Earth’s population. “You can argue whether it [a world government] exists or not, but its plans are all coming true,” states the “energy healer.” She calls the dollar “printed candy wrappers,” and the banking system a “financial pyramid” and “legalized usury.”

Peunova’s new rhetoric was not only conspiratorial and anti-Western; She also criticized the Russian authorities - and even filed statements with the FSB about treason against Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev and former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov . Peunova saw signs of treason in the cooperation of the Russian authorities with NATO countries - for example, in the fact that Alliance soldiers participated in the Moscow Victory Parade in 2010.

“The conflict between Ukraine and Russia was planned by Bismarck and Hitler”

At the end of 2011, Svetlana Peunova announced that she was running for president, but her associates managed to collect only 246 thousand signatures out of  the required two million. The “energy healer” was dissatisfied with the protests of many thousands against the results of the Duma elections of 2011 and 2012 in Moscow and the regions. “On Sakharov Avenue, Navalny was applauded by five thousand people who were paid for it,” Peunova said . True, in the end, those same protests helped her party “Volya” - in response to opposition speeches, the Kremlin simplified the process of registering parties. Volya never achieved electoral success.

In 2015, Peunova officially changed her last name to Lada-Rus. In  a group on VKontakte dedicated to Peunova’s books , it is said that the new surname has a “symbolic” meaning and is “connected with both Slavic culture and our homeland.”

A year later, a criminal case  was opened against Svetlana Lada-Rus for fraud  - she allegedly fraudulently took possession of the car and house of one of her followers. In the same year, the Ministry of Justice declared the Volya party extremist and  liquidated it . Lada-Rus hid from persecution; where it is now is unknown. She has not yet been sentenced . However, the “energy healer” continued to maintain contact with her supporters in Russia. They founded a new structure - the “National Union for the Revival of Russia” (OSVR), whose ideology was based on the favorite conspiracy theories of Lada-Rus.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Lada-Rus fans actively opposed quarantine measures and the introduction of QR codes, although Svetlana herself did not make public statements about Covid and vaccination. Her followers worked not only on the Internet, where they posted anti-vaxxer posts and comments, but also offline - they delivered leaflets about the dangers of vaccination to mailboxes in different cities of Russia. Two Meduza interlocutors close to the presidential administration claim that anti-vaxxing by Lada-Rus and its supporters was considered a big problem in the Kremlin. “Peunova’s actions were discussed at meetings along with  the actions of Maria Shukshina . Its influence on the Covid agenda was serious,” clarifies one of Meduza’s sources.

When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Lada-Rus and its supporters did not speak out about the war. However, soon after Vladimir Putin announced “partial mobilization” in Russia in September 2022, members of the OSVR reminded themselves. On the basis of the organization, a “Council of Mothers and Wives” of mobilized people  appeared , who began to talk in the media and social networks about various problems at the front. One of the coordinators of the Council was a resident of the Samara region, Olga Tsukanova, who ran for municipal deputies of the region from the Volya party in 2015. Her son was mobilized.

The participants of the “Council of Mothers and Wives” were, first of all, not satisfied with the poor provision of the mobilized - they did not criticize the Russian authorities for starting the war. However, activists found signs of “treason” in  the exchange of Azovstal defenders for Russian prisoners of war in September 2022 - and even turned to the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, about this. “It is they [the Ukrainian Armed Forces fighters] who are the outright Nazis against whom denazification has been declared,” the Council said. Bastrykin did not react to this appeal.

In October 2022,  Svetlana Lada-Rus herself spoke about the military decisions of the Russian authorities. She wrote a post on the OSVR LJ account, in which she criticized Vladimir Putin for the withdrawal of Russian troops from several regions of Ukraine in the spring of 2022 and the poor supply of the Russian army. She also accused the president of  persecuting the Russian opposition with the help of Center “E,” the department for combating extremism under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to Peunova, the work of the Center is supervised by the Bilderberg Club .

She made no public statements after this. She also did not comment on “Foreign Agency”.

The last entry in the OSVR LiveJournal is dated November 25, 2022. It says that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was planned by “ Bismarck and Hitler,” and it was beneficial to Israel . The post also says that Vladimir Putin is Jewish by nationality, and his real name is Shelomov .

Two Meduza sources close to the political bloc of the Presidential Administration point out that Lada-Rus supporters were among the first to talk about the problems of the mobilized - this probably irritated the authorities.

They assume that Lada-Rus could have been given the status of “foreign agent” on the initiative of the security forces, but they believe that “these are some unnecessary measures”: “She is already under criminal prosecution, her party is recognized as extremist.”