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Now You Can Master Russian Geography in Song

Kids Learning Tube / YouTube

There is a YouTube channel called “Kids Learning Tube” that produces animated videos featuring anthropomorphic objects singing about their names and properties. It has more than 60,000 subscribers, and its videos have attracted more than 60 million views.

The channel’s most popular video, with more than 7 million views, is a 40-minute compilation of 18 songs about the Solar System. The channel also has songs about the regions of Spain, France, Italy, and the United States, dwarf planet candidate 2014 UZ224, the larynx, metalloids, the bladder, Thomas Edison, and snowflakes.

Just before New Year’s, on Dec. 23, Kids Learning Tube published a music video about the 85 federal subjects of the Russian Federation. “We are the 85 federal subjects of the Russian Federation / Broken up into five types you’ll learn in our explanation,” the song begins. Somewhat controversially, the song also includes Crimea and Sevastopol, territories Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

With wild-eyed smiling faces dotting a map of Russia, the video is nearly five minutes long, but you’ll likely go to bed tonight thinking it lasted eons, after you spend hours hearing the song repeating in the deepest recesses on your brain. Over and over.

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