Russian ultranationalists and members of the Night Wolves motorcycle club held a bizarre ceremony near the border with Estonia, claiming to “baptize” the Moon and symbolically connect it with Russia

Russian ultranationalists and members of the Night Wolves motorcycle club, which is close to Vladimir Putin, held a ceremony on September 27 near the border with Estonia, claiming they wanted to “baptize” the Moon and symbolically connect it with Russia.

The event was initiated by Aleksandr Prokhanov, president of the Izborsk Club, a state-funded group of nationalist and ultraconservative intellectuals. The ceremony took place around a rock covered with Bronze Age petroglyphs in the Novgorod region. The organizers presented the stone as an object of cosmic origin and called it a “moonstone.”

According to the independent publication Agentstvo, clergy took part in the ritual, and soil collected near the rock was placed at the base of a ceremonial cross. The stone was subsequently blessed. Prokhanov said the object had transmitted a “message from the heavens” to the territory that would become Russia.

The ceremony was followed by a Night Wolves demonstration featuring a vehicle presented as a lunar rover and an armored vehicle. The event combined Orthodox symbols, nationalist mythology, patriotic rhetoric, and references to military power and space exploration.