She whispered: "The end will come. Then there will come civil strife. It will not be the kind where brother kills brother . . . It will sweep all away. It will sweep away power. Then there will be anarchy. Tuva will not always be a part of Russia.

"Angels and spirits, demons and souls surround us. The end will come. This is only the beginning. It will be bad. There is no way to avoid it. There is no exit from it now.

"Russia is no longer going anywhere. The nation is exhausted. The country and its potential are exhausted. We have no future . . . There is no more future for Russia."  

Then she moved into the darkness at the back of the cabin to find something she wanted me to see. The most important thing, she said. "This icon is from the 15th century. This is God." She stroked it. "This is God." 

She stroked the face of Christ, took my hand and pressed it to his face. "Be careful," she said, pressing a magic charm into my palm, "there are people watching you." 

After a few days I decided to drive into the Siberian forests to the north — or as the locals said, "Back to Russia." I took a shared taxi to Abakan, a dented Chinese people carrier with a flashing panel on the dashboard displaying mandarin that nobody knew how to turn off. The passengers were unnerved I had dared ask such a powerful witch about Putin. They saw it as a bad omen. The people carrier rounded the hills at a worrying speed. The countryside was bare, with piles of stones left for ancestors on hilltops densely planted with holy ropes and bushes hung with green, red, blue and yellow Buddhist prayer rags — offerings to the spirits of the place.   

The people carrier trundled on. The steppe hills were magnificent and bare, rolling towards the horizon like a giant yellow duvet, empty as the desert. An hour or so outside Kyzyl, perhaps at the regional boundary, the car was flagged down to general groans, and an officer swaggered up to the car demanding documents. The passengers' faces, which had been so expressive minutes earlier, turned into masks. Everyone showed their passports — for the Tuvans their internal Russian passport, and for me a British one. This was what he was looking for. I was taken out of the car — the driver was ordered to stay where he was — and into a building that was plain on the inside, but was actually a small police station. 

At first I thought the officer wanted a bribe. I behaved dismissively as I lugged my bags into the building; I may even have been rude. The room was bare. There were three chipped Formica tables for inspections, on one handcuffs lay in the evening sun. Confused and irritated, I was made to sit down on a small stool as the man in charge settled himself in a proper chair.