Father Sergei Romanov, a controversial, ultra-conservative Russian priest, has taken control of the Sredneuralsk convent outside the city of Yekaterinburg and challenged authorities to force him out. Romanov,  a former policeman who reportedly spent 13 years in a prison colony for murder before repenting and dedicating his life to religion, has been very vocal about the social distancing measures taken in Russia in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, accusing church leaders of “working with the forerunners of the Antichrist” by closing churches. Because of his controversial rhetoric, the Russian Orthodox church suspended Romanov and prevented him from preaching, and in May he was forbidden to wear a cross, after he continued to encourage people to disobey public health orders. Last Tuesday, he entered the Sredneuralsk convent, which he helped found in the early 2000’s, and seized control with the help of several armed militiamen. Read More »

A 35-year-old Russian influencer got a lot of backlash after announcing her upcoming marriage to the 20-year-old stepson she helped raise for 10 years. Marina Balmasheva, who rose to fame in Russia for documenting her weight-loss adventure online, is getting a lot of attention these days, because of her controversial new romantic relationship. Shortly after divorcing her 45-year-old husband, to whom she had been married for 1o years, the Instagram influencer announced that she was romantically involved with her 20-year-old stepson, Vladimir. The couple reportedly plan on tying the knot in the near future and having children of their own… Read More »

A family of five from Russia’s Sverdlovsk region took social distancing recommendations to the extreme by self-isolating in a forest several kilometers away from the nearest human settlement. On April 6th, Sverdlovsk police received a phone call from a woman in the village of Krasnogvardeisky who claimed that her brother had taken his wife and three children ages four, eight and ten years old into a nearby forest to escape the threat of coronavirus infection. The family had left the village a day before and hand’t been in touch since, so the woman was worried about their well-being, especially the young children. After organizing a search-party, police found the family living in the indicated forest, under the open sky. Read More »

Dr.Vorobev, a “medical jewelry” company based in Kostroma, Russia, has been getting a lot of attention for the sterling silver coronavirus-shaped pendants it has been selling since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sold online for 1,000 rubles ($13), the coronavirus pendant created by Dr. Vorobev has become a very controversial piece of jewelry on Russian social media. While some people buy it and post photos of themselves wearing it on their Instagram and VK accounts, other criticize the company for trying to make money off a global health crisis that has already killed tens of thousands around the world.  Pavel Vorobyov, the founder of Dr. Vorobev, insists that the pendant is a gesture of support for health professionals, not a way to exploit the current crisis. Read More »

Nina Krinitsina, a pensioner from the Russian village of Makarye, around 850 kilometers east of Moscow, has been decorating her modest house with colorful bottle cap mosaics for the last seven years. The amateur artist, who currently has over thirty plastic mosaics nailed to the walls of her house – some numbering over 1,000 bottle caps – was originally encouraged by her nephew. He would provide her with grid designs downloaded from the internet, and she would piece them together. She used peas at first, but quickly switched to a more suitable material – plastic bottle caps. She obviously needed quite a stock of caps of various colors to create all the designs, and she didn’t shy away from visiting the local landfill in search of them. Read More »

Photos of hunters struggling to lift up a giant wolf they had shot so they can pose with it have been doing the rounds on social media this week. The incredibly large animal was reportedly shot near the village of Aleksandrovka, in Blagoveshchensk district, the autonomous Republic of Bashkortostan, where packs of wolves had recently started terrorizing residents. Interestingly, locals say that wolves had not been seen in the area four over four decades, but they recently turned up this winter, and had not shied away from entering human settlements. Several dogs have been found torn to pieces in recent weeks, and around twenty cows and sheep and horses have been eaten by the wolves. To make matters worse, guard dogs have apparently stopped barking to alert people about approaching wolves. Read More »

Tatyana Dvazhdova, a 22-year-old female boxer from Russia doesn’t consider herself weaker than a man, and to prove this point she spent years hiding her gender and fighting male boxers under the fake name “Vladimir”. During a conference called “International Women’s Day – Feminism, Socialism, Sexism”, Tatyana Dvazhdova revealed that a few years ago she posed as a male boxer in order to fight against other men and prove that she was their equal. The muscular woman cut her hair short, let her body hair grow and did everything she could to conceal her female traits. She even got a fake ID and fought under the name Vladimir Ermolaev , winning 9 out of her 17 boxing matches. Tatyana proved her point, that women can compete against men in boxing, but as soon as she revealed her true identity, she was banned from competing against men. Read More »

A Russian influencer recently took to social media to share details of a freak accident that claimed the lives of her husband and several friends during a pool party for her 29th birthday. The victims reportedly suffocated after dry ice was unloaded into the pool. Ekaterina Didenko, an Instagram star with over 1 million followers, recently celebrated her 29th birthday, which quickly turned from a joyous event to a tragic one, when someone made the fatal mistake of dumping 25 kilograms of dry ice into the swimming pool. According to some sources, Didenko’s husband, Valentin unloaded the dry ice into the water to dazzle guests with the smokey reaction, while others claim that he did it in order to make the waster cooler after some guests coming out of the sauna complained that it was too warm. Whatever the reason, the dry ice in contact with the water created a chemical reaction that caused three fatalities and several cases of chemical burns. Read More »

People passing by the Mega shopping center in the Russian city of Kaliningrad every day have gotten used to the blue sweater-wearing husky calmly waiting for something or someone on the cold pavement. He’s been dubbed the Russian Hachiko and the comparison actually makes some sense. The clean blue sweater that the Russian Hachiko wears every day is a clear indication that he is not some stray, but just to make sure people don’t chase him away, his owner, a woman named Svetlana, always hangs a hand-written home next to the dog explaining that he is simply waiting for her to get off work so they can go home together. Apparently, the dog howls from morning til dusk if left alone in his owner’s apartment, so she prefers to take him with her in the morning, and leaves him outside the Mega shopping center, where he waits for like a good boy. Read More »

A couple of police officers in Russia were convicted for busting a drug den that they had created themselves in order to boost their performance rating. Senior detective Ivan Mantrov and Yury Titov, the head of a police station in the Russian city of Kostroma, allegedly convinced three locals to produce the illegal synthetic drug desomorphine, aka “crocodile”, in an apartment, even offering to supply the necessary ingredients, which are thought to have been sourced from the police’s evidence stores. The two officers convinced the victims – known drug users already under investigation in another case – to set up the drug then by promising to help them get off on bail. Read More »

In a controversial case that has been the talk of a whole country these last few days, a 13-year-old girl went on TV to tell the world that she is pregnant with her 10-year-old boyfriend. The two children, Darya and Ivan, recently appeared on Russian television show “On Air Live” to tell their story, get tested and be confronted by experts about their controversial pregnancy. Reports of Ivan having impregnated his 13-year-old girlfriend had been going around Russian social media all last week, but the couple’s parents gave their permission for them to finally show their faces to the world. The 13-year-old girl claimed that she had not been intimate with other boys than Ivan, and her version was believed by a psychologist, but then other experts produced evidence that Ivan was too young to leave anyone pregnant. Read More »

A Russian woman was allegedly unable to leave her kitchen for two days after her pet cat started behaving aggressively and tried to attack her whenever she tried to exit the room. This is the kind of news story that sounds so crazy, it has to be fake! At least that’s what I thought when I first read the title, but then I noticed that it had originally been reported on the official website of the Rescue Service in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, which actually rescued the woman from her own home. On Sunday, January 19, a local resident noticed a woman signaling for help in the window of a third floor apartment, at 9/6 Suvorov street. After catching the attention of the passer-by, the woman explained that her pet cat had started acting crazy two days before, and would try to attack her whenever she tried leaving the kitchen. Sick of waiting for the feline to calm down, she finally decided to ask for help. Read More »

A Moscow man made national news headlines this week for putting a drawing he made when he was only six-years-old on sale online for no less than 140 million rubles ($2.3 million). 41-year-old journalist Vladimir Mkrtchyan placed the ad for his old childhood drawing on Russian classifieds site Avito on Monday, and it quickly went viral due to its exorbitant price. 140 million rubles seems kind of steep for a childish drawing, but the seller considers it’s worth twice that much, because it reflects the realities of the Soviet era through the innocent eyes of a six-year-old boy. Read More »

While most 11-year-olds are mostly concerned with school, video games, and surfing the web, Timofey Klevakin, a boy from rural Russia, is busy training in the gym and breaking weightlifting records. Ever since he was five years old, Timofey was interested in weightlifting, watching his father train at a makeshift gym in their home village of Shalya, in the Ural mountains. Noticing his boy’s interest, Arseny Klevakin started training him, despite his wife’s protests over concerns that he was too young. At the age of six, during a regional weightlifting competition, Timofey managed to amaze attendants and judges by deadlifting a 55-kilogram barbell. He’s been working hard ever since, and the now 11-year-old is getting ready to break the national deadlift record for his weight class by lifting a 105-kilogram barbell. Read More »

In a time when reality TV is pretty much synonymous with the Kardashian name, launching a reality show centered around life at a secluded orthodox monastery hardly sounds like a winning idea, but one Russian TV channel is going ahead with the project anyway. A television channel entirely owned by a religious organization affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church is currently busy filming a reality show with a spiritual twist. Named “Island”, the original program will take place at a secluded monastery located on a lake between Moscow and St. Petersburg. There, the 10 chosen participants will embrace the monastic lifestyle, taking part in activities like cleaning the monastery grounds, making candles, preparing foods and meeting with priests, as they try to find the answers to questions that have long been troubling them. Read More »