I’m going to tell you something weird:
Though it was a cult originating in Japan, Aum in fact had MUCH more believer recruiting success in RUSSIA than it ever did in Japan (though it was pretty successful there, too).
And Aum did pick up one or two believers in a very secretive Russian weapons lab.
Their growth came at a point when in the former Soviet Union it sometimes appeared that ANYTHING was for sale.
At a compound in Yamagata Prefecture they were manufacturing AK’s, training in small unit tactics like crazy with airsoft, they had a huge Mi-26 Soviet transport:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vuedrmFtli0/maxresdefault.jpg
You won’t believe this but they even had berthed up somewhere an Oscar-class NUCLEAR SUB they had somehow bought.
They had other stuff, too.
Their plan was to help usher in Armegeddon by spraying all of Tokyo with NERVE GAS.
The total plan isn’t very well known but there were even CRAZIER parts to it.
Please tell us more. This is insane!
In fact, Aum Shinrikyo had a show broadcast on Radio Moscow at the time. I remember listening to it, it was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard.