A Russian man who didn’t want to answer Putin’s call to arms and join his country’s war against Ukraine has been living alone deep in the middle of the woods for almost four months.

Adam Kalinin (alias) was against the war in Ukraine from the very beginning. He was actually arrested for two weeks and fined for displaying a banner that read “No to war” on the outside of his apartment building. But when Vladimir Putin signed a mobilization order calling roughly 300,000 Russian men to war against Ukraine, Kalinin knew he needed to find a way to avoid being sent to the front line. Financial issues, his friends, and the general idea of leaving his homeland prevented the young IT specialist from running to another country, so he did the next best thing he could think of – kissed his wife goodbye and hid in the middle of a freezing forest. He’s been living there for almost four months.

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Sergey Artemyev is a Russian artist who specializes in oil on canvas and pastel on canvas paintings, including some of the best optical illusions we’ve ever seen.

When creating painted replicas of real-life objects, depth and thickness are some of the toughest things to pull off, which makes sense, as creating painted renditions of three-dimensional objects is anything but easy. Still, we’ve some pretty impressive optical illusions in the past, so it’s definitely doable, but few can do it better than Sergey Artemyev. The Russian artist is so confident in his ability to paint hyperrealistic replicas of various objects that he places them right next to his artworks and you still can’t tell which one is real.

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Russian trolls have come up with a new way of triggering Europeans dealing with inflated gas prices – broadcasting cheap Russian gas burning 24/7 on video streaming platforms like Twitch.

It all started on September 11, when a new Twitch channel aptly named “russiangas1” started broadcasting. The premise was simple – a phone aimed at a stove top with all four burners turned on broadcasting gas being burned 24/7. And if that wasn’t enough, the streamer decided it would be a good idea to show just how cheap burning all that gas would be for them – 1.44 euros per month ($1.35) – at a time when gas prices in Europe are higher than they’ve ever been. A thermometer constantly showed the audience how nice and warm it was in the room, and a digital clock showed that the video was live and not on a loop.

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The world of contact sports is about to be taken by storm by one of the craziest creations in human history – armboxing, a weird take on the art of boxing.

The world is full of weird and wacky sports, but when it comes to downright crazy inventions, the Russians definitely take the cake. After the insanity that was ‘car-jitsu’ – basically jiu jitsu in a car – the brilliant minds in Mother Russia have come up with something even more insane. Known only as ‘armboxing’, this new contact sport sees two fighters standing opposite each other being chained to a podium with their lead hands glued together and the other hand free to do damage.

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The ancient village of Khunzakh, in Dagestan, is literally perched on the edge of a deep canyon, making it one of the most awe-inspiring human settlements in the world.

Before Khabib Nurmagomedov took the MMA world by storm and became the undisputed champion of the UFC Lightweight Division, most people hadn’t even heard of Dagestan. Today, it’s almost associated with the legendary mixed martial arts master, but the Russian autonomous republic is actually home to a number of wonders that the world has yet to discover. Today, we’re featuring Khunzakh, a very old village with a very unique location – right on the edge of a 100-meter-deep canyon.

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A computer-operated robotic arm reportedly grabbed and broke the finger of a seven-year-old boy during an exhibition chess match at the Moscow Open, last week.

Chess is probably one of the safest sports anyone can play, at least as far as potential bodily harm is involved. But when one of the players happens to be a powerful robotic arm and the other a 7-year-old-boy, things can apparently get pretty violent. In what has been described as an unprecedented incident, a chess-playing robot recently grabbed and broke the finger of a young boy during an exhibition match. The video of the shocking incident has been doing the rounds online and putting into question the safety of having children play against mechanical, computer-powered opponents.

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A company in Russia’s Leningrad region recently laid a small section of strawberry-scented asphalt as an experiment to help solve the problem of unpleasant odors.

I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled hot asphalt when road sections are being laid or fixed, but it’s not the most appealing odor in the world. Luckily, we may not have to put up with it for much longer, as companies are beginning to come up with solutions to this issue. Just a few months after a Polish company came up with floral-scented asphalt to improve working conditions for the people working with it on a daily basis, a Russian company has successfully laid a 700-meter-long stretch of road using strawberry-scented asphalt.

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In case the name ‘car-jitsu’ wasn’t clear enough, this new contact sport that’s getting a lot of attention on Russian social media is basically jiu-jitsu in a car.

If you were to make a list of the most awkward places to grapple and wrestle in, the car would probably rank pretty high, and that’s precisely what makes car-jitsu so intriguing. Invented a couple of years ago by Vikentiy Mikheev, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Judo black belt and a professional mixed martial arts fighter, car-jitsu challenges practitioners to subdue their opponent in the small confines of a car. Everything inside the car – including the seat belts, steering wheel, mirrors and chairs – can be used to gain an upper hand in the match, but, just like in regular jiu-jitsu, hittinh is not allowed.

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Tired of seeing his family’s money being donated to the local church, an exasperated Russian man set the place of worship a blaze in a feat of rage.

On the morning of June 26, a fire broke out at the Church of St. Basil the Great in the village of Pargolovo, Russia’s Saint Petersburg district. The fire quickly engulfed the wooden roof and walls of the building, and the entire place would have probably burned to a crisp until the firefighters arrived, if the parishioners didn’t put the fire out themselves. Still, the damage was considerable, and local news outlets reported that many of the locals had tears in their eyes as they looked at their local place of worship. But that sadness quickly turned to anger directed at the man responsible for the devastation.

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Dozens of underprivileged families and families of children with disabilities in the Russian region of Tula recently received bags of Cheetos snacks as food assistance and they were just as happy as you’d imagine…

If this story was posted on April 1st, you’d probably think it a joke. Heck, you’re probably thinking that right now, and you’re right to do so, but, sadly, it’s true. In early May, Russian news media reported that the Rus food fund had recently carried out an operation, distributing 1,100 bags of Cheetos snacks to dozens of impoverished and underprivileged families in ten municipalities of Russia’s Tula region. About 700 messages of gratitude were posted on social media posts about the charity event, but the photos of the recipients with their Cheetos bags told a very different story…

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This year, the Nikola-Lenivets art village in Russia celebrated Maslenitsa by burning a 23-meter-tall wooden Tower of Babel, a biblical symbol of discord.

Every year since 2001, Nikola-Lenivets, a popular art park about 220 kilometers from Moscow, has celebrated the Slavic holiday of Maslenitsa by burning a specially-made artwork. Maslenitsa symbolizes the passing of winter and the coming of spring, a new beginning, but this year, the artistic tradition has been more grandiose and more meaningful than ever. A 23-meter-tall wooden tower of Babel designed by young architect Ekaterina Polyakova was set ablaze in a ceremony designed to symbolize the end of discord between nations.

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Hematogen, or gematogen, is a Soviet-era supplement notorious for containing at least 5 percent black food albumin, a technical term for cow’s blood.

In the Soviet Union, even sweet treats had a practical purpose. In the case of Hematogen, its controversial secret ingredient helped consumers treat anemia, malnutrition, and fatigue. It was consumed by both children and adults, who loved both its sweet vanilla flavor and the effect it had on their health and overall food. Once only sold to the public in pharmacies, Hematogen can now be found in a variety of stores and shops in ex-Soviet countries like Russia and Ukraine, and even as far as the US and Canada. You can even order them on Amazon.

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A security guard got so bored on his first day at work that he ruined a million-dollar avant-garde painting by drawing eyes on the faceless figures depicted in the artwork.

Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures, an artwork painted between 1932 and 1934, was on display at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg as part of an exhibition when someone noticed something strange about it in December of last year. The three figures depicted in the avant-garde piece were originally faceless, but now two of them had small dots for eyes. The vandalism was first noticed on 7 December by two visitors who alerted the Yeltsin Center staff about it, and a search for the perpetrator began. One thing that no one expected was for the security guard paid to prevent such things from happening to be the vandal…

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Chateau Erken, in the Russian Federation’s Kabardino-Balkaria autonomous republic, looks like an extremely well-preserved medieval castle, but in reality, this architectural wonder is just over a decade old.

Located in the vineyard-dominated countryside of Kabardino-Balkaria, Chateau Erken is a tourist attraction unlike any other in Russia. Not only does it mimic the fortress-like design of European medieval castles, but its location in the middle of a man-made lake full of fish and wild birds is just as impressive. People from all over the country come to this rural area in Southern Russia to see Chateau Erken in person. Photos and videos of this amazing castle have been doing the rounds on social media for years, but some people still can’t believe it exists and that it was built not by a king, but by a legendary businessman.

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Residents of several villages in Russia’s Magadan region have recently reported black snow caused by the soot produced by an outdated, coal-powered water-heating plant.

In Omsukchan and neighboring Seimchan, two villages in the Siberian far east, snow doesn’t always look the way you’d expect. In fact, sometimes it’s quite the opposite. Instead of an immaculate white covering everything as far as the eye can see, locals are treated to a nightmarish view of black, soot-covered snow that the kids sometimes play in. Photos and videos of this disturbing scenery have been doing the rounds online every winter for years, but locals say that despite the temporary outrage they spark online, nothing ever changes.

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