http://mpora.com/videos/dnaElvo8K Poor Russia…. the motherland did the world of snowboarding a great service when it welcomed Iouri Podladtchikov into the world, only for him to abandon his place of birth and defect to Switzerland. Luckily, all is not lost. They now have a world-class jibber in the form of Denis Leontyev, and their fondness for teaching 3-year olds how to snowboard means that the future’s bright. We’re all for that, actually – anything to stop them joining the Russian military….

There’s also a growing number of top-quality snowboard films coming from the Russkis. Hot on the heels of the We Are 2012 crew are  Hash Heaven, and their new film Sponsor This.

Hash Heaven (in association with ‘Joint’ Snowboards – definitely seeing a theme here) are Nikolay Grinev, Alexey Osovickiy, Stepan Artemev, Ilya Verxotyrov, Artem Pitchxadze and the wonderfully-named Alexey Batmanov. The guys jib everything from tanks to elaborate ice sculptures, all shot with a liberal use of super-slo-mo. Hmmm, Sponsor This…. surely someone will?!

Oh, and check out that screengrab for the video – how much does it look like this shot of Ben Kinnear at the Lecht?! Spooky….