Just Another Russian Daredevil Hanging Off Vertigo-Inducing Ledges

Kirill Oreshkin, from Moscow, is a photographer with a strange passion. He’s crazy about ‘rooftopping’ – a sport that involves hanging on for his dear life from all kinds of precarious ledges.
In all the photographs, you can see him smiling nonchalantly at the camera. Going by his expression, you’d think he was hanging around the corner of a sidewalk. But he’s actually perched hundreds of meters above the ground, in an extremely precarious position. One wrong move and there’s no escaping death.

Seriously, I don’t get how Oreshkin can be so calm about dangling from such incredible heights. He almost looks bored in some of the pictures. It looks like he’s even clicked a few selfies while balancing himself with just one hand. Some photographs feature his friend Mustang Wanted, another rooftopper who had made an appearance on OC last year.

Rooftopping has been a trend in Russia for quite some time now. Last October, we reported the stunts of Russian daredevil Alexander Rusinov. The 19-year-old’s extreme photographs show him performing headstands on the edges of roofs, putting even Oreshkin’s pictures to shame.

Way back in 2012, ‘Skywalking’, a milder form of rooftopping, was all the rage among Russian youth. It had kids standing at the edges of high buildings and pretending to be at the top of the world. We had pictures of 19-year-old Marat Dupri then, which actually look very safe when compared to Oreshkin and Rusinov!

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Mi-24 HIND: The Flying Russian Crocodile Can Fight and Flee

Most helicopters are designed to either carry a lot of cargo at the expense of maneuverability—like the Chinook—or be quick and nimble while sacrificing armament and transport capabilities, like the Huey. Russia's Mi-24 HIND multi-mission gunship isn't "most helicopters."

The Mil Mi-24 is a dual-role helicopter gunship designed as both a attack helicopter and 8-troop/4-litter transport. The Soviet Union produced more than 2,500 HIND variants at the Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant beginning in 1972 and used them extensively through out the Soviet War in Afghanistan. The concept of a multi-mission gunship was quite revolutionary at the time of its inception and even today, the HIND has no direct NATO equivalent and is only roughly recreated in the American Sikorsky S-67 Blackhawk.

The HIND was built off the older Mi-8 Hip and Mi-14 Haze helicopters hand measures 57 feet long, 21 feet wide, and 21 feet tall. The HIND wasn't built for comfort, it was built for speed. It features a pair of top-mounted Isotov TV3-117 turboshaft engines driving a 57-foot wide, five-blade main rotor with a three-blade on the tail. Its top speed is over 200 MPH with a 280 mile range. Early models had the pilot and weapons operator sitting in tandem under a single piece of bulletproof glass; later upgrades introduced the now iconic "double bubble" canopy. The HIND is heavily fortified against small and medium arms fire, able to shrug off .50 caliber shots—even to its rotor blades—and withstand 20-mm cannon hits thanks to ballistic-resistant windscreens and a titanium-wrapped cockpit tub. What's more, the cabin interior is over-pressurized in the event of a NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) attack. This heavy armor earned the Mi-24 the unofficial nickname "the flying tank" though many Soviet pilots also referred to it as the "Crocodile" thanks to its camouflage pattern.

The Mi-24 didn't just fly around taking it on the nose mind you—this is a proper assault chopper. It relies on a 1,470-round 12.7 mm Gatling gun, a pair of twin-barrel GSh-30K autocannons, and window-mounted machine guns in the cabin. The Hind is also outfitted with a pair of stub wings that not only provide up to a quarter of the aircraft's lift when travelling at speed but also provide three attachment points for a variety of external weapons, depending on whether the mission calls for air support, troop insertions, anti-tank operations, or aerial combat. These external stores can include 3M11 Falanga anti-tank missiles, various general-purpose bombs (up to 500kg in weight) and rockets.

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