Story By: Anna Casap, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A couple staged their wedding shoot in gas masks at an illegal chemical waste dump to try and get locals to wake up to the fact their city is in danger of becoming one huge landfill site.

The unromantic photo shooting took place at a chemical waste landfill near the city of Ryazan in the western Russian region of Ryazan Oblast, with the pictures taken by photographer Aleksey Rudenko.

The protagonists were groom Oleg Kabanov and bride Victoria Menshikova, although it is unclear if she was ‘blushing’ underneath her gas mask.

Menshikova explained: “We first had the idea of the photo shoot about a month ago, but everyone came together in early September to organise it.

“I do not belong to any specific environmental organisation, but our families understand that an environmental catastrophe threatens both the city and planet as a whole.”

Kabanov said that the ‘waste wedding’ was to show people that everyone will soon have to get married in such surroundings as “the whole city is in danger of becoming a huge landfill”.

According to the groom, a chemical waste landfill on the outskirts of Ryazan appeared around 10 years ago and has continued to operate despite a court ordering the site’s closure in 2011.

On 12th August, a fire started at the landfill and it did not stop “smoking and stinking” until early September, according to Kabanov.

Netizen ‘Olga Sotnikova’ commented: “People-pigs are polluting every area where they live. One day, nature will teach us a lesson…”

‘Veliko Rajnatovic’ said: “If we don’t stop polluting the environment we are going to end up like we see in every apocalyptic film!”

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