A 22-year-old man from Sochi, Russia, was recently busted by police after his parents help prove he tried to have them assassinated by posing for photos of their fake bloody murders.

The shocking story of a young man who tried to have his parents and sister killed so he could inherit their wealth first appeared in Russian media earlier this month, with even more disturbing details surfacing later, as the criminal confessed to police. Apparently, police learned of the man’s diabolical plan from a friend of his, to whom he had confided in. To make sure he was serious about killing his family, police set up a meeting between the man and an undercover policeman posing as a professional hitman. Their worst fears were confirmed when the man gave the “assassin” all the details he needed to get into his parents’ house, like the location of the security cameras and of their guard dog, as well as a plan of the home. He allegedly offered the “killer” 3 million rubles ($54,000), one for each of his murdered family members.

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A couple in Volvograd, Russia, were recently reunited with the child they had though had died seven years ago, right after birth. What’s even more astonishing is that the startling revelation was the result of a completely accidental administrative error.

In 2011, a young girl gave birth at a hospital in Volgograd, but was soon told that her child was not viable and that it would not survive a week. Advised to give up the child, the depressed mother agreed to sign a waiver leaving the newborn in the care of the state and went home. Five days later, guilt overwhelmed the two parents, so they returned to the hospital to retrieve their baby and look after it for as little as it had to live. They were told that they were too late, that the baby had died. After grieving their terrible loss, the parents went on with their lives, but last year, they were shocked to discover that the child had been alive all this time.

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Every year, the Nikola-Lenivets art park, near Moscow, Russia, burns a wooden structure to celebrate Maslevitsa, the oldest surviving Slavic holiday. This year, founder Nikolay Polissky burned the largest structure yet – a 30-meter-high Gothic cathedral made of wooden branches.

On February 17, 2018, art lovers gathered at the Nikola-Lenivets art park witnessed one of the largest bonfires in recent history – a wooden cathedral built for the sole purpose of being raised to the ground. A team of around 20 workers had laboured for three months under the guidance of famous Russian artist Nikolay Polissky, assembling the dry tree branches into the impressive 30-meter Gothic edifice, only to see it eaten up by the flames in a matter of minutes. It was an impressive display indeed, but a controversial one as well.

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Investing in crypto-currency like Bitcoin is a bit like going on a wild roller-coaster these days, and that can really take a toll on investors’ psyche. To help them better cope with the fear of losing huge sums of money due to devaluation, one Russian crypto-currency fund will start offering investors free psychological support.

Moscow-based Blockchain Fund, one of the largest crypto-currency funds in Russia, recently announced that it has hired a professional psychologist to counsel desperate investors who lost a lot of money after due to Bitcoin sharp drop in value and make sure that they “don’t do anything stupid”. Owner Andrey Karpukhov claims the new service will help depressed investors recover mentally and return to their normal lives.

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The Didu Cafe in Moscow, is one of the most interesting-looking cafes in the world. Its walls are covered with over 140,000 colorful plasticine figurines made by visitors over the years. It’s also home to the largest plasticine Mona Lisa on Earth.

The founder of Didu Cafe wanted to give patrons a chance to leave their mark on this place in a semi-permanent way, but also give them something to do while waiting for their food and drinks. Plasticine was the perfect solution. It’s easy to work with, colorful and ends up looking good, or at least funny, even in the hands of someone with no artistic talents. So he placed boxes of plasticine on all the tables and started inviting guests to create small artworks out of it and decorate the walls and ceiling of the cafe with them. Today, Didu is home to over 140,000 plasticine artworks, from abstract designs and childish figurines, to popular symbols and even profane messages.

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Anton Maltsev, an ex-member of Russia’s Special Forces and a Kossovo War veteran, was recently pardoned for turning his Moscow apartment into a veritable forces chuck full of traps, firearms and even a DIY titanium exoskeleton he used to fight off debt collectors.

Maltsev’s unusual story first made news headlines in 2016, when military bomb disposal experts were called to break down his apartment door, after debt collectors failed and triggered a pepper-spray trap in their attempt. Inside the apartment, the experts found several tripwire traps, reinforced doors, an AK47, several semi-automatic firearms, numerous pistols, a grenade launched, and eight kilos of explosives. But the most startling discovery was a home-made exoskeleton made up of titanium plates, aluminum, and featuring a bullet-proof helmet and vest. It was this contraption that earned him the nickname “Russian Iron Man”.

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A young woman from the Russian Republic of Iacutia who was allegedly assaulted in a local disco went to the hospital to have her wounds registered so she could press charges, but was shocked to discover that the doctor on duty was the same man who had attacked her. Instead of checking her wounds, the doctor started hitting her again.

A short video that has been doing the rounds on Russian social media for the past couple of days shows doctor Vladimir Naumov threatening and physically assaulting 20-year-old Anastasia Dmitrieva, at the hospital in Neryungri, eastern Russia. The woman had allegedly come to the hospital to have the wounds she had sustained a few hours earlier, at the local disco, looked at, only to find that doctor Naumov was the same man who had inflicted them.

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Ever wonder what a cross between a bear and a large dog would look like? Well, if you can’t even imagine it, maybe these pictures of a bear-like dog rescued by a shelter in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk will give you an idea.

Named Medvebaka, from the Russian words for ‘bear’ (Medved) and ‘dog’ (Sobaka), the unusual-looking canine was recently rescued by the Nash Dom animal shelter, whose volunteer staff have been working hard to find him a forever home. Photos of the animal, with a head resembling that of a brown bear and the body of a large dog have attracted a lot of attention on Russian social media, and even abroad, but as it turns out, this in not some mythical creature, but the result of poor mixed breeding.

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Ever heard of Russia’s healing pyramids? They are the work of Dr. Alexander Golod, a Ukrainian scientist who claims that they have the power to prevent diseases, enhance the potency of medicines, cure impotence and even control the weather.

Dr. Golod, a Moscow-based scientist and defense engineer, began building his mysterious pyramids in 1990. By 2001 he had completed 17 of them in various parts of Russia and the Ukraine. By 2010 that number had increased to over 50 pyramids worldwide, with the majority in Russia and the Ukraine. Each pyramid has an internal framework of PVC pipes that are then covered with sheets of fiberglass to form smooth faces. They were designed to fit the Golden Section phi ratio of 1 to 1.618, a standard ratio found in nature that can be used to create beautiful, natural looking compositions. This proportion makes the structures steeper than the Egyptian pyramids, with a slope of about 70 degrees. The top is nearly twice as high, relative to the perimeter of its base, making Golod’s pyramids look more like church steeples or obelisks.

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A Russian woman has left her husband after she recognized the view from her bedroom window in a photo on another woman’s Instagram account and realized that he was cheating on her.

Yulia Agranovych, a former model turned pediatric dentist, from St. Petersburg, was browsing through her Instagram feed one morning, when she noticed a familiar sight in a photo posted by a certain Vlada Abramovich. It was the same view she admired daily from her bedroom window, so she continued looking through other woman’s gallery and discovered several images of her husband, Nazar Grynko. Yulia decided to confront him about the photos.

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What comes to mind when you think of Siberia? Maybe vast expanses of snow-covered land, teeth-chattering cold, Lake Baikal, and the Tunguska meteorite mystery. How about gun-totting brown bears? One such animal recently gave a hunter quite the fright, but more importantly, took off with the man’s bag, which happened to contain two firearms.

The incident took place in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, where an unnamed 57-year-old hunter stopped at a cabin in the woods, miles away from the nearest human settlement. He left his belongings there and went to get some water, only to find a brown bear prowling around the cabin. The man panicked and ran into the woods, leaving his guns behind. He only notified the local police about the incident after several days of searching for the weapons to no avail. For all we know, the furry offender may now be roaming the taiga with a Vepr carbine and an IZH shotgun in tow.

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If you’re a diehard vegetarian who can’t bear the smell of cooked meat, or even the thought of living near someone who likes to consume meat, you’ll soon be able to move into a vegetarian-only apartment complex in Russia.

Veda Village, an ongoing construction project in the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Russia, was designed for vegetarians looking to practice a healthy and ethical lifestyle in a community of like-minded people. The first and most important requirement to buy or rent an apartment here is to be a vegetarian. Clients will undergo interviews with sales agents, and if they fail to convince them that they are true vegetarians, their application will get denied. But a meat-free diet is not the only thing required to earn a place in Veda Village. According to developers, smoking and the consumption of alcohol in the residential complex are also prohibited.

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Inspired by popular Instagram accounts like ‘Rich Kids of Instagram’ or ‘Luxury Kids of Instagram’, as well as social media stars like Gianluca Vachi and Dan Bilzerian, people who can’t actually afford to fly on private jets are renting them on the ground for professional photo shoots, just so they can post their own lavish lifestyle photos on Instagram.

Just because you don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on renting a private jet doesn’t mean that you can’t make your social media friends turn green with envy. With just a few hundred dollars, you can actually rent a luxurious Gulfstream G650 aircraft for a couple of hours and have a team of professional photographers and makeup artists create the illusion that you are actually living a life of luxury. You can then post the photos on Instagram and sit back as your friends and fans drool over them.

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A family of migrant workers from Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, recently returned to their native village of Zavod after a month of work to find their house partially demolished and an asphalt road passing through their property.

The Udalov family spend most of their time away from home, working in the nearby city of Nizhny Novgorod, but they always look forward to spending their short vacations at their quaint property in Zavod. Unfortunately, they no longer have a house to come back to, after authorities took the liberty to tear down part of it in order to make room for an asphalt road. No one contacted them about the project, so they just came back after a month to a partially demolished house and their belongings spread on the side of the new road traversing their yard.

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A team of Russian artisans from the city of Blagoveshchensk spent three months creating a real-life version of the iconic “Iron Throne” from the popular Game of Thrones TV series. They claim it is the only one in the world made out of actual iron swords, as even the one on the show is made of plastic.

The life-size Iron Throne was created by two blacksmiths, a welder, and a couple of artists, all members of the Association of Artisans of Blagoveshchensk and the Amur Region. In a video showcasing the impressive metal artwork, Vadim Nikolayev, one of the people involved in the project, said that the throne required about a half tonne of metal, which was used to forge 387 swords and a few dozen daggers. Some of the blades were hammered into the right shape to create the seat of power and finally welded together.

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