If you want to delve into the paranormal, here’s a reason for you to enlist in the Russian Army – an MoD magazine says some troops are taught to crack safes, evade ambushes and burn computer chips using... telepathic powers.

What is the Russian Army’s best-nurtured superpower? Don’t even think of Spetsnaz or nuclear subs, or EMP weapons, because ‘Armeisky Sbornik’ (‘Army Digest’ in English) has got something bigger to tell. The magazine, run by the Defense Ministry, claims the military is very much into parapsychology, which studies strange things like telepathy, precognition, near-death experiences or reincarnation.

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Back in the late 1980s, the Soviet military began developing what the offbeat piece – entitled‘A super-soldier for future wars’ – calls ‘metacontact,’ in other words, a kind of telepathic power that can make a foot soldier into a superhero.

Such a warrior, it insists, is able to use his brain power “to burn chips in generators, eavesdrop on conversations or disrupt telecommunications, including television and radio waves.” More than that, believe it or not, the military have been experimenting with miscellaneous linguistic skills. A telepath had reportedly managed to read a file locked in a safe that was “written in a language he didn’t speak.”

Other features of the superpower had apparent military applications, the magazine reveals. The telepathic contact may help troops to evade ambushes, detect hideouts and treat those wounded in action. It is also indispensable while carrying out “a non-verbal interrogation” of an enemy soldier.

The interrogator would know “what kind of person he is, what strengths or weaknesses he has, and whether he is good for recruiting.” Ripping an enemy’s mind wide open “is 100 percent credible, you can’t wriggle out of it,” the article claims.

What’s more, high-ranking Russian politicians, business captains and top managers in the banking sector were also taught some telepathic skills. (Warned is armed, so keep it in mind when making small talk with a Russian official or dealing with a Russian bank).

Joking aside, some top-tier militaries have been scrupulously studying ways of influencing human minds and manipulating human behavior. Many leading powers have used psychological warfare in recent conflicts, with Iraq and Afghanistan – known for the US campaign to win ‘hearts and minds’ there – being the most notable examples. However, such efforts never went beyond what was scientifically proven.

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Russian scientists were quite skeptical about the publication. Yevgeny Aleksandrov, head of the pseudoscience commission at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RBC daily that there was some classified research of “combat parapsychology.” But such studies “were deemed pseudoscientific, this is complete nonsense,” he said.

Adding insult to injury, he added that “all this talk about transmitting thoughts has no scientific grounds, there was no recorded instance [when it was proven].”

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