Смягчающие обстоятельства

Two elderly ladies from St.Petersburg, Russia, who tried to bring a park bench into a trolleybus, immediately hit the headlines and were made into a popular meme after a short video from the shoot had been posted on the Internet. The video turned out to be so absurd and topical that it became a TikTok hit instantaneously and got 100 million views on different social media. After that, it received extensive coverage on the state TV channels, and the main characters of the story became household names all over Russia. The enormous country kept wondering who the women were, why they needed that bench, what was going on, and if that was fake news or not.