Yuri Mashtakov, known online as FROST, is a Nizhny Novgorod resident and one of the largest Russian-language video bloggers, with around nine million subscribers on his channel [1]. He started out recording gaming walkthroughs, then moved into survival content — overnight stays in the forest, homemade shelters, and army rations sent in by viewers.
Channel
By April 2016, the channel had more than four and a half million subscribers and nearly two billion views — which at the time made Mashtakov one of the most prominent let's-play creators in the Russian internet [2].
Around the same time he came to answer questions from his fellow townspeople: a meet-and-greet with viewers was held in Nizhny Novgorod. The advice he gave there was simple and, surprisingly, free of any promotional tone [2].
Make videos that you yourself enjoy. Always be yourself — don't put on an act for the camera.
Survival instead of walkthroughs
Over time, gaming recordings gave way to a different genre: spending the night in the forest in winter, building a shelter from whatever was at hand, living for a day on army rations sent in by subscribers. In promotional materials he is described as a survivalist blogger [1].
The format proved more universal than gaming content: watching a person build a fire in the rain requires no knowledge of any particular game. It was precisely this genre that grew the channel from four and a half million subscribers to nine [2] [1].
The Nizhny Novgorod connection
The city remains his point on the map and in others' projects. When the TV channel "Pyatnitsa!" and the agency Media Instinct launched a quest with boxes hidden in five major cities across the country, Mashtakov became the face of the venture — and the first broadcast was held right in Nizhny Novgorod [1].
For the Nizhny Novgorod internet, he is that rare case of a local creator who reached a nationwide audience without moving into a different genre: first gaming, then survival, but always — his own camera and his own voice.
Where he is read now
Besides his video channel, Mashtakov has two major platforms: a VKontakte page with nearly three hundred thousand subscribers, and a Telegram channel with more than sixty thousand. Figures as of September 2, 2026 [3].
- FROST video channel — approximately 9,000,000 subscribers [1]
- VKontakte — 295,545 subscribers [3]
- Telegram — 61,801 subscribers
Scale
Mashtakov's personal audience is an order of magnitude larger than that of any Nizhny Novgorod publication: the city's largest news Telegram channel has around fifty-five thousand subscribers, while he alone has over sixty thousand on Telegram and nine million on his video channel [1].
This is a case of a city resident speaking to the audience of an entire country while remaining a Nizhny Novgorod native: fellow locals gathered for his meetup, and federal projects chose to launch their ventures right here [2] [1].
Sources
- sostav.ru — "Pyatnitsa!" and Media Instinct case study: how to attract attention to a new show (archive)
- progorodnn.ru — Pro Gorod Nizhny Novgorod — Interesting things in Nizhny Novgorod: a conference with video blogger Frost took place (archive)
- vk.com — VKontakte — Yuriy Mashtakov's page: number of subscribers as of September 2, 2026