THIS is the haunting moment cops raided a mass live burial to rescue cult followers wrapped like mummies and entombed in graves.
Police in Russia raided a bizarre shamanic ritual in which two young women were “buried alive”.
The pair with heads wrapped like mummies had to be dug out of the graves in a forest in Leningrad region.
Both were alive after their ordeals.
One had difficulty standing up when she was dug out.
Thirteen more worshippers were gathered around a fire, some waiting to be buried after digging their own graves.
The self-styled shaman named Timur and his female assistant Yekaterina Koroleva were both detained on suspicion of running a sinister cult.
First, the shaman was ordered to dig out the two women from their 20-inch deep graves.
Koroleva – organizer of the ritual – refuted the allegations that the participants had paid nearly £80 to be buried alive, stating that their heads were not fully covered, enabling them to breathe.
“The essence of the ritual is essentially a kind of reset,” she said.
“It’s a psychological trance ceremony where a person undergoes a complete reboot, a full cleansing.
She explained, “If someone has experienced significant life events or desires a complete transformation in life, they choose this radical burial method.”
According to reports, individuals were swathed in tattered cloths and interred as part of an alleged revival process or symbolic meeting with Hel, the Norse deity of death.
Law enforcement were deciding how to proceed against the detained pair.
They could face up to seven years in jail, reported Novye Izvestia news outlet.
A shaman is a person believed to have access to, and influence in, the world of spirits, typically through rituals, visions, and healing practices.
This comes as a Russian rape cult leader who called himself an alien named Great Shaman was arrested in Argentina.
Konstantin Rudnev, 57, was handcuffed and dragged away by cops at Bariloche Airport as he attempted to flee to Brazil with six women.
Video shows the twisted guru — who once claimed to be a god from the star Sirius — being busted in a dramatic operation that saw 14 suspects snared at two airports over 1,000 miles apart in a joint swoop by Argentine authorities.
Rudnev — already convicted of rape and running a violent sex cult in Russia — reportedly tried to slit his throat with a razor as officers closed in, according to El Pais.
He was reportedly treated for his injuries and was pictured with a bandage around his neck.
He now faces fresh charges of human trafficking, sexual exploitation and drug offences, more than a decade after he was jailed for 11 years in Siberia for a string of abuse crimes involving female followers.
The bizarre cult, Ashram Shambala, founded in 1989 in Novosibirsk, brainwashed followers — mostly women — into surrendering their property.
They would reportedly cut ties with loved ones and take part in so-called “ritual orgies” in exchange for “salvation.”
Women were allegedly coerced into sex with Rudnev — while male followers were ordered to remain celibate.
The cult even flogged recordings of the encounters to fund operations and promised spiritual enlightenment via “women’s practices” and Eastern esotericism.
