The authorities of Yekaterinburg thanked the Orthodox activist for her appeal to the head of Wagner PMC

The mayor’s office of Yekaterinburg expressed their gratitude to Oksana Ivanova, an Orthodox activist, who turned to the head of Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin with a request to join the fight against the popularization of the Shigir idol in the Sverdlovsk region. Interest in the artifact is growing precisely thanks to the social activist, URA.RU was told in the press service of the mayor’s office.

“The administration of the city of Yekaterinburg thanks the Orthodox social activist Oksana Ivanova for her close attention to the theme of the Great Shigir Idol, a unique exhibit more than 12 thousand years old. Historians, archaeologists, local historians, popularizers of science have worked for many years, as experience has shown, for a very narrow audience. Thanks to the involvement of new forces and the audience in this work, interest in the artifact has grown significantly,” the mayor’s office noted.

They also expressed confidence that Ivanova’s activities would attract even more tourists to the city. Earlier URA.RU reported that Oksana Ivanova turned to Yevgeny Prigozhin with a call for help. “Help us cope with the idolization of our region, stop the obsessive advertising of the Shigir idol in the public space,” the Sverdlovsk woman asked the head of the Wagner PMC. Prigogine did not become involved in solving the problem, because he did not know what its essence was. At the same time, the well-known intellectual and atheist Anatoly Wasserman believes that the Shigir idol cannot influence the situation in the Sverdlovsk region.

The Shigir idol is considered to be the oldest surviving wooden sculpture in the world, its age reaches 12,100 years. Earlier, the authorities of Yekaterinburg announced that they intended to promote the artifact at the federal level, and with it the city. However, Orthodox Sverdlovsk, based on a study by an international group of scientists, consider the Shigir idol to be an image of the devil.