Albert Zakirov, an artist from the Russian Federation’s Tatarstan Autonomous Republic has an original, albeit controversial painting technique – he uses women’s naked bodies as his paintbrushes.

Albert Zakirov started drawing and painting at an early age and spent much of his childhood preparing for art school. After studying with an excellent teacher for a couple of months in tenth grade, he picked up the necessary knowledge to get admitted into art school, where he quietly studied the basics while experimenting with all sorts of unusual techniques and mediums. He never graduated from art school, but it was there that he first used a woman’s body to paint on canvas, and it was this experience that inspired him to make the technique his own.

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Russia is home to a number of unique and wonderful things, and apparently, the list also includes bioluminescent snow that glows blue.

Last month, Russian biologist Vera Emelianenko went for a walk to the White Sea coast, high in the Russian Arctic, and noticed something very unusual in the snow – a blue glow that looked like Christmas lights. With Emelianenko were Mikhail Neretin, the son of a molecular biologist working at the same remote field station, and two dogs. It was Neretin wh first noticed the strange blue glow, and as they walked to investigate, they noticed that their footsteps created streaks of ethereal blue “like blue Christmas lights in the snow”. Even the dogs left a glowing trail as they raced ahead, and squeezing the glowing snow in the hand only made it glow stronger.

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Three popular influencers were recently sentenced to over three years in a Russian penal colony for pranking the driver of a ride-sharing company by pretending to steal his car.

In March of 2021, the three bloggers decided to pull another one of their popular pranks and then post the footage on social media. They called an Uber-type taxi, and two of them got in the car and asked the driver to help their friend load some baggage in the trunk. When the driver got out of the vehicle, one of them got behind the wheel and drove off. The whole thing was caught on camera by one of their accomplices, who was filming from a few meters away, only to the driver, this seemed like an actual car theft, so by the time the vloggers brought the car back and explained that it had all been a joke, the police had already been notified. And they didn’t find the prank funny at all.

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If Aquaman had a home on dry land, I imagine it would look very similar to this Russian apartment that’s been getting a lot of attention on social media lately.

Featuring a floor that imitates the ocean, complete with dolphins, sea stars, seashells and other marine life, this Russian apartment put on sale for a whopping 27,499,000 rubles ($376,000) is one of the craziest-looking apartments we’ve seen in a while. The 240-square-meter abode also features some wild wall decor, like a cloud-covered sky to complement the sandy beaches and turquoise water on the floor, as well as some pink furniture that seems out of place.

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In recent years, the village of Kamenka in Russia’s Lipetsk region has become famous as the home of Zmei Gorynich, a giant three-headed statue of one of the most iconic villains of Slavic folk stories.

The “Kudykina Gora” family park on the outskirts of Kamenka village has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Lipetsk largely thanks to a single exhibit – the statue of Zmei Gorynich, an “extremely realistic” and “frighteningly attractive” rendition of the main antagonist in dozens of Russian folk stories and legends. Created by Ukrainian sculptor Vladimir Kolesnikov, the impressive statue stands about 15 meters high and is about as large as you’d expect a fearsome three-headed dragon to be. Did I mention it also breathes fire and screams menacingly from time to time?

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To say the “Le Courage” restaurant in Sankt Petersburg, Russia, has a vintage look would be a gross understatement. The place looks to be in a state of severe disrepair, but it’s all by design, as the place just opened a couple of years ago.

Located in  Sankt Petersburg’s newly-built Russian House residential complex, Le Courage is a modern restaurant with a very unique look. It’s stylized as a 19th-century mansion in serious need of repairs, with deliberately worn walls, chipped stucco moldings, antique furniture, and deliberately worn floorboards. During the “renovation” phase, designers used a hammer to chip away at the stucco molds they had just glued onto the walls, they washed out the plaster to make it look like the ceiling had survived more than one serious water leak, and the 19th-century pattern wallpaper was left unfinished in places.

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Tsovkra-1, a small village in the mountains of Russia’s Dagestan autonomous republic, is famous for being the only place in the world where the entire able-bodied population knows how to walk a tightrope.

No one knows exactly how the tightrope-walking tradition of Tsovkra-1 (named ‘1’ because of another Tsvokra village nearby) began, but one thing is for sure – for the last 100 years, every able-bodied man, woman, and child in the village has learned the walk a tightrope, and many have gone on to become circus performers. Although Tsovkra-1’s population has dropped from around 3,000 in the 1980s to under 400 today, all those who remain are trained in the art of tightrope walking.

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A 28-year-old nurse from the Russian city of Irkutsk has been dubbed the “Russian Rapunzel” after it was revealed that her ankle-long hair hasn’t been cut for 23 years.

Anzhelika Baranova was only five when her hair was last trimmed. Neither she nor her parents planned to let her hair grow for over two decades, it just sort of happened, as if it was meant to be. She was always very proud of her hair, and taking care of it was never much of a chore. She claims she doesn’t do anything special to maintain her locks, she just washes it twice a week with regular shampoo and conditioner and gently brushes it with a comb to ensure she doesn’t break knotted strands.

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There are many Soviet-era remnants scattered all over the Russian Federation, but few as blatant as this old Zighuli car covered in Persian-style rugs that recently went viral on social media.

The Zhiguli VAZ was a popular car model produced in Soviet Russia and exported all over the world. Outside of the Soviet Union, it was sold under the LADA brand, so it might look familiar even if you’re not from Russia. It was always considered a reliable vehicle that could take some punishment and still run, but overall it was one of the many symbols associated with the Soviet Union. Still, no model was ever as Soviet-ized as “Carpets”, a unique VAZ 27011 that captures viewers’ imagination with its unusual exterior – a layer of old Persian-style rugs that were once all the rage in communist countries.

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The Swedish tax agency, Skatteverket, rejected a young couple’s request to name their son Vladimir Putin, the name of the famous Russian president.

Public radio broadcaster SR recently reported the case of a couple based in Laholm, Sweden, who were banned from naming their newborn son after Russia’s president. Skatteverket didn’t explain exactly why they rejected the naming request, but according to Swedish law, names should not be offensive or risk causing problems for the bearer, nor are first names that clearly resemble surnames allowed. It wasn’t immediately clear what category “Vladimir Putin’ fell into, but the couple was forced to go for something less controversial.

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An opposition party candidate running for a municipal position in St Petersburg, Russia, is competing against at least two other people who not only legally changed their names to his, but also borrowed his physical appearance to confuse voters.

Russian opposition politicians are used to running against candidates with the same surname, it’s a commonly used tactic that can derail a few precious votes in close elections, but Boris Vishnevsky’s case stands out. A senior member of the liberal Yabloko party running for public office in a district of Saint Petersburg, Vishnevsky already knew that two of his opponents had recently changed their names to “Boris Vishnevsky” to confuse voters. What he didn’t know was that they’d stolen his look as well. In a district voting poster showing the three candidates side by side, it’s difficult to tell them apart, because they all look nearly identical.

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The Techa River flowing down the eastern flank of the Ural Mountains in Russia is considered the world’s most radioactive river, as a result of having been used as a dumping ground for nearly 80 million tons of radioactive wastewater over several years.

At first glance, the Techa River looks pristine, inviting even, and you’d never guess that it once was – and by some accounts, still is – the dumping ground of a secret nuclear compound responsible for exposing tens of thousands of people to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 23 or the 24 rural communities that the Techa flowed by have been evacuated in the last 13 years, but not before thousands of people developed cancers, or suffered chromosomal abnormalities and birth defects. Even today, when authorities claim the levels of radiation in the Techa River are “acceptable”, Geiger counters still beep ominously when placed near the waterline…

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Alexander Volchek, an obstetrician-gynecologist from Novosibirsk, Russia, has been dubbed “Doctor Chip” by Russian media, after he had several tiny chips implanted under his skin to help him perform daily tasks seamlessly.

Volchek recently made news headlines in Russia after announcing that he recently implanted a bank card chip in his arm, which he hopes will help pay for stuff just by swiping his palm instead of an actual credit card. The implant has been attempted several times before in Russia, but failed every time, so he hopes to become the first happy recipient of a contactless transmission chip in the country’s history. But this is only the latest addition to Doctor Chip’s growing collection of subdermal implants, some of which he had done as far back as 2014.

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A Russian man was given a 3.5-year suspended prison sentence for tormenting his neighbors with loud horse neighing and stomping noises every night, for over two years.

47-year-old Yuri Kondratyev is famous in his home city of Nizhny Novgorod, after making national headlines for mentally torturing the neighbors in his apartment building for over two years. The unemployed man, who lives alone ever since his wife left him, started harassing his neighbors in 2018. Annoyed by the noises one of his neighbors’ kids were making during the day, Yuri started exacting his revenge on the whole building at night. At first, he started playing loud rock music for hours, and at one point switched to recordings of horse neighing and stomping.

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Located in the Russian Far East, the island of Sakhalin is allegedly home to giant versions of common plants like buckwheat, burdock and butterbur that can grow up to 5 meters tall.

Sakhalin is known for being the largest island in the Russian Federation, as well as a point of contention between Japan and Russia over the centuries. However, according to obscure reports going back over a decade, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago, as well as the nearby Kuril Islands are home to versions of ordinary herbaceous plants of truly gigantic proportions. Plants that normally reach the knee of an average adult, on these islands allegedly grow several times the height of a human.

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