81-Year-Old Granny Arrested for Ordering the Killing of a Police Officer

An 81-year-old Russian woman with ties to the criminal underworld of Krasnodar was recently arrested for ordering the killing of a criminal investigations detective.

Lyudmila Ryabykh is not your average grandmother. Not only does the 81-year-old have a strong connection to members of Krasnodar’s organized crime, but she once threatened to kill a paramedic with a sawed-off shotgun and she recently placed a hit on a local detective that apparently rubbed her the wrong way. The pensioner was caught red-handed after ordering the killing of an officer from the Krasnodar police department and paying part of the reward for proof of his death. Unfortunately for her, Ryabykh didn’t know that her criminal associates had revealed her plan to the authorities, and she now risks spending the rest of her days behind bars.

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Russian Café Breaks the Internet with Breast Milk Lattes

A cafe in the Russian city of Perm has been getting a lot of attention after announcing plans to introduce a controversial breast milk-infused latte on its menu.

Perm-based cafe chain Coffee Smile has been the talk of the Russian internet over the past week after announcing intentions to use real human breast milk as an ingredient for coffee products like lattes and cappuccinos. The craziness started earlier this month, when Coffee Smile locations started plastering posters advertising the controversial new ingredient. People started sharing photos of the photos on social media, and before long, local businessman and Coffee Smile owner Maxim Kobelev released a promotional video claiming that his cafes will be using genuine breast milk stored in special, pharmacy-grade bags.

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Mother of the Year – Woman Allegedly Orders Murder of Her Own Daughter for an Apartment

A Russian woman has been accused of hiring a contract killer to have her own daughter murdered in order to get her hands on the woman’s apartment.

A 67-year-old woman from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is being accused of ordering the murder of her 48-year-old daughter so she could inherit her apartment. According to investigators, the pensioner shared her ominous intentions with a local acquaintance who told her that they knew someone who could pull it off, for a fee. On April 19, 2023, the acquaintance set up a meeting between the woman and the would-be perpetrator of the murder in a park on Odesskaya Street, in the city of Krasnoyarsk, during which they discussed the details and method of committing the crime. The woman allegedly promised to pay the contract killer 80,000 rubles ($1,040) once he produced evidence of her daughter’s murder.

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Drug Trafficker Pretends to Be Young Mother by Dressing Cat in Infant’s Clothes

Police in Russia recently arrested a woman who reportedly dressed a cat in thick baby clothing in order to look like an innocent young mother and traffic dangerous drugs.

It’s a well-documented fact that drug traffickers come up with all sorts of ingenious techniques to move their products undisturbed. We’ve written about drugs diluted in women’s breast implants, or concealed in hollowed-out coffee beans, but these methods pale in comparison to that used by a young Russian woman trying to conceal packets of methamphetamines in the city of Nizhny Tagil. According to police spokeswoman Irina Volk, the unnamed woman was spotted walking hand in hand with a little girl and pushing a stroller with what looked like a baby inside. It’s unclear whether police were tipped off about the woman, or they simply noticed something off about her, but neither she nor her baby were what they seemed.

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This Frozen Fish Salad Was Voted the Worst Dish in the World

Indigirka Salad, a Russian fish salad that originated in Yakutia, the coldest inhabited region in the world, was recently voted the worst dish in the world by the readers of online food guide Taste Atlas.

Indigirka is a rather simple dish – it consists of diced whitefish such as broad whitefish, elma, and muksun combined with onions, and seasoned with oil, salt, and pepper. That doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well, at least not so bad as other dishes we’ve featured on Oddity Central in the past. The problem with Indigirka salad is that the fish is not only raw, but frozen solid, which is to be expected from a dish born in a region where temperatures routinely drop below -70 degrees Celsius. The dish is usually served as an appetizer, accompanied by lemon wedges and a shot of vodka.

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Scammers Convince Man to Send Them His Savings And Set Fire to a Bank

A Russian man was recently arrested after allegedly being tricked into throwing a Molotov Cocktail in a Moscow bank by scammers who also relieved him of his life savings.

A few days ago, Moscow police arrested a 48-year-old man from Ruza, a town in the Moscow region of Russia, for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail in a Sberbank branch in the Russian capital. Bank employees were able to put out the flames before the firefighters arrived on the scene and police quickly identified and detained the perpetrator. But this was far from an open-shut case; the more the suspect tried to explain, the crazier his story got, and by the end, investigators didn’t know whether to throw the book at the guy or just feel sorry for him…

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Russian IT Specialist Has Been Hiding in Freezing Forest to Avoid Army Conscription

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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The Mind-Blowing Optical Illusions of Sergey Artemyev

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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Russians Are Trolling Europeans by Streaming Gas Burning 24/7 on Twitch

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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Armboxing – Probably the World’s Weirdest Contact Sport

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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Khunzakh – Literally Living on the Edge in Dagestan

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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Chess-Playing Robot Breaks 7-Year-Old Boy’s Finger During Moscow Tournament

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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Russian Company Lays Strawberry-Scented Asphalt Road

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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Car-jitsu – The Goofy Contact Sport Only Practiced in Cars

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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Man Sets Fire to Church Because His Wife Kept Donating to It

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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