Russian Researcher Finds 35cm Bigfoot Footprint Near Saint Petersburg

A plaster cast, AI analysis, and a trail of bare footprints in a Russian swamp — this video is one of those finds that makes you sit up and pay attention. A field researcher named Vyacheslav Grigoryev recently shared his findings on the Smolinsky Seminar YouTube channel, and the details are worth digging into. Grigoryev describes himself as a landscape artist and tattoo artist by trade, but his passion has clearly pulled him into the woods. After watching episodes of the Smolinsky Seminar and the research of Yuri Baibak in the Leningrad region, he decided to venture into the forest near his rented summer house last summer just to see what was out there. What he found turned a casual curiosity into a full-blown investigation. The location is roughly on the border of the Leningrad region and the resort district of Saint Petersburg, near the city of Sestroretsk. In May, while exploring a swampy section of the forest, Grigoryev stumbled upon a trail of bare footprints. Multiple sizes were present — what he interpreted as possibly a man, a woman, and a child — all appearing to be hairy, and all walking in a way that seemed intentionally designed to step in each other's tracks, as if to disguise the trail. The prints were mixed in with elk and wild boar tracks, and there was no logical reason for barefoot humans to be wandering through that particular patch of woods. No mushrooms, no cranberries — just deep impressions in the moss where the vegetation had been pressed down to bare earth. Then, on July 8th, things got even more interesting. About 100 meters from the swamp, Grigoryev found a single, deeply pressed print showing a clear bare footprint with a deeply indented heel and big toe. The size was obviously larger than any human foot, and the depth suggested considerable weight. Luckily, he keeps plaster in his bike trunk for exactly these situations. He mixed it up, poured it into the impression, and about half an hour later had a solid cast. The cast measured approximately 35 centimeters long and 13 centimeters wide. For reference, that corresponds to a human shoe size of around 52 to 54 and an estimated height of 220 to 230 centimeters — roughly seven feet tall. As Grigoryev put it, it's highly unlikely a barefoot basketball player was out for a stroll in that forest. Here's where the science angle comes in. Grigoryev sent photos of the cast to Ilya Treiger, who ran a deep analysis using three leading artificial intelligence models. According to Grigoryev, all three analyses agreed, and Treiger reportedly said it was the first time in his practice that a submitted cast had produced such consistent results. The conclusion: the most likely candidate is an unknown large bipedal primate — a relic hominid. The morphology fits the category of a large human-like plantigrade footprint, with dimensions that overlap with many reported Sasquatch-type tracks. While the size alone isn't a definitive diagnostic feature (since it could theoretically overlap with an extremely large human foot or a bear's hind paw), the overall shape was closer to a hominid-type foot than a bear track. But Grigoryev didn't stop there. Toward the end of August, he discovered what may be one of the clearest tracks yet in the same swamp — a print where the moss was deeply depressed, suggesting significant weight. He estimates the length at around 38 centimeters, possibly stretching to 40 centimeters once the moss relaxed back into shape. He also found another impression in a creek ditch where water had washed away the silt, revealing what appeared to be a heel impression and the slope where a big toe would have been — though a stone may have prevented the toe from leaving a mark. Beyond footprints, Grigoryev has been cataloging other markers he believes point to the presence of these forest inhabitants. He mentions palm prints, wood structures, arches, lean-tos, barricades, pictograms, and what he interprets as possible bedding sites. He's also identified two new marker types he hadn't seen documented before: "brushwood markers," which are small twigs collected and left in areas where other markers like arches are found, and what he calls a "yeti fence" — a section of forest two to five meters across where real trees and branches have been woven together to create a wattle barrier. The purpose, he suspects, is to hinder people who might be out picking mushrooms from wandering into certain areas. For anyone interested in relic hominid research, this is the kind of boots-on-the-ground fieldwork that adds to the growing body of evidence being gathered across different regions. The combination of physical casts, AI-assisted analysis, and detailed photographic documentation gives this report a bit more weight than your average sighting story. The Smolinsky Seminar channel has the full presentation with all the photographs, so it's worth a watch if you want to see the cast and the track photos for yourself.