So I used to have a Russian friend who had a pretty thick accent and like a lot of Russians tended to eschew articles. She would say things like “Get in car.” And stuff.
Well one day this asshole who had been kind of tagging along with us asks her why she talks like that because it makes her sound dumb and I still remember her response word for word.
“Me? Dumb? Maybe in America you have to say get in THE car because you are so stupid that people might just get in random car, but in Russia we don’t need to say that. We just fucking know because we are not stupid.”
Thus is why I assume the Heavy speaks the way he does. He’s not stupid.
Okay, so Russia’s kind of a big place, so I asked Google for specifics. According to this, the picture was taken by this guy at a safari park in Lipetsk Oblast.
Here’s the park’s homepage (all in Russian but Google Translate’s doing a decent job). Looks very pretty, actually