Geolocating Barbie Girl

[sonic oak]

Hi guys. I am currently training my geolocating skills and have run into a little bit of a problem. Giancarlo gave me permission to post this.
I've decided to try and locate the following video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7FIpqPvL7E&ab_channel=ValeryPetrov, but haven't had any luck. Based on the article in the description of the video, I've narrowed it down to St. Petersburg, potentially the Pushkin Barracks, but haven't been able to find a match. Could anybody help me with this? If you find it, I would love a step-by-step guide of how you did it.
Thanks in advance!

[earnest aurora]

I'm not sure I have time to continue this, but for convenience: this is the article linked in the video information. It talks about a 35-day training course for students from the military department of St. Petersburg State University during the summer of 2012 and has more videos to possibly help locate. It also has a video from 2011, which makes me think it was/is an annual thing.
https://paperpaper.ru/russian-student-on-march/

[mossy basin]

Yes. You have to go through the articles written about it, then watch the other videos. They show the main place but in one you have more footage of the buildings. Try Yandex for that. These aren't soldiers, so where did they go from the campus, what's nearby with a drill sergeant, who is quoted by one of the students in an interview.

[sonic oak]

Thanks @earnest aurora and @mossy basin! I went through the videoes on the YouTube channel and most of them have more or less the same angle, with one video being a bit longer and showing some more information. Maybe my eyes aren't trained enough what to look for though. I also went through the article and tried to look up 'St Petersburg State University Military Department' and 'St Petersburg State University Department of Mathematics and Mechanics'. I scoured through all the university campuses in St Petersburg on Google Earth but couldn't get a hit. What I did afterwards was to identify military bases in St. Petersburg and found the following;

Pushkin Barracks; 59.7060021049, 30.3978337882

Pushkin Airport; 59.68435, 30.33688

Western Military District; 59.9380999986, 30.3171168051

Krohnstads; 59.9822110358, 29.783154712

The closest I could get was Pushkin Barracks, where I was able to locate similar patterns on the ground, but when it came to matching the buildings, I couldn't get a hit. I also took sevenral screenshots of the video and tried to look them up with Yandex, but the hits I got back were just hits that referred to the same videoes but on different sites. When I went on those sites, I tried translating them with Google Lens, but couldn't get any info on the location. Any tips on how I should proceed?

[mossy basin]

Why did you want tips, you did all perfect

[sonic oak]

@mossy basin Thank you so much, but I still haven't been able to geolocate the video and that's what I am asking for help with 🙂

[mossy basin]

I will take a look tomorrow if no other is jumping in.

[sonic oak]

Much appreciated

[mossy basin]

This is how it has to look from above
60,0121770, 30,3754364

[sonic oak]

@mossy basin Yeah I've also been able to find that pattern two places at the Pushkin Barracks, but I haven't been able to match the buildings that's seen in the videos.

[mossy basin]

Yeah, I would say it's more outside

[sonic oak]

Yes, agreed

[sonic oak]

@novel zephyr Hey! Saw you had luck geolocating the Monster Truck in another post. Could you maybe help me with this one? Would be much appreciated

[novel zephyr]

Will have a look into it 😉

[mossy basin]

Maybe they went outside the region for that 35 day drill. I tried old footage, new footage, other songs lol, I tried to find the canon but with no result. So far.

[uneven temple]

I'm thinking the same. I spent all of yesterday evening looking at St Petersburg to no avail. The architecture of the surrounding buildings doesn't seem to match other institutional buildings in the city.

[mossy basin]

And it's 11 yo, the old barracks could be gone. Next try tomorrow

[uneven temple]

I was looking at 2011-2013 imagery on Google Earth when I was searching.

[mossy basin]

I should have known ,😅

[novel zephyr]

You probably wold not do this outside your region, you do this at your home base

[earnest aurora]

They're university students on a summer camp, basically.

[novel zephyr]

https://yandex.com/images/search?cbir_id=53776%2F3vOTCExLVobHN6zwgRzDLA9473&cbir_page=similar&lr=10466&rpt=imageview&source-serpid=4YavRD8GZ2yF385KopZaog&url=https%3A%2F%2Favatars.mds.yandex.net%2Fget-images-cbir%2F53776%2F3vOTCExLVobHN6zwgRzDLA9473%2Forig

[mossy basin]

Military students. The camp is before the oath.

[novel zephyr]

ah ok, maybe check above url, maybe it helps

[quiet relic]

58.745739, 29.820306

[quiet relic]

Hope it makes sense

[mossy basin]

And the wall fits, too.

[quiet relic]

Yeah it all fits. I chose a 2017 map because of the quality of the image so there's a few minor differences, but it's clearly the correct location. It was not in St Peterburg as initially mentioned 🙂

[quiet relic]

@sonic oak as requested here's a step by step guide.
I hope it makes sense. Let me know if you need extra details.

I started by watching all the videos from the YouTube user. There were a few other ones recorded in the same location showing different angles and buildings which would be useful for the geolocation. I read the description about how this was the military department of St Petersburg State University, but after looking through all the possible areas in the city it became clear it wasnt there.

There were not many useful comments on the YouTube video so I went in search of an even earlier version of the footage. I found some earlier ones still from 2012 but still not too useful. However, in my search I stumbled upon a reddit post (from 2015) with the same video: https://www.reddit.com/r/ANormalDayInRussia/comments/32ujge/russian_army_singing_barbie_girl/
The top comment mentioned how "they are not army, but university students who get military training alongside a degree." The person then went on explaining a bit the system in the following comments.

I figured that the St Petersburg State University would have a specific location to which they sent students for this program because at the end of one of the videos we see the group in front of a building waiting to enter. So I searched for "saint petersburg state university military courses barracks" in russian (Военные курсы Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета казармы).

The first result led me to an article from this year about the oath ceremony of students who attended something similar: https://spbu.ru/news-events/novosti/149-studentov-spbgu-prinyali-voennuyu-prisyagu. The text mentioned the city of Luga. There's more than a Luga in Russia but only one near St Petersburg.

I zoomed in that one and searched for "Luga military" in russian (Луга военный) on Google Maps. There were only a few results so that only took a few seconds. One of them had a building I immediately recognised from one of the other YouTube videos also posted by the user you originally shared here. https://maps.app.goo.gl/StoAf5cuHxA1WtQN9).

Afterwards I just went to Google Earth Pro to use historical view and matched everything else.

[sonic oak]

Man, you're a legend @quiet relic ! Thank you so much for locating it and thank you so much for the explanation! You really aced it man, great work. Will take your methods with me into my next geolocating task 👍