Kirill Tereshin, the bodybuilder people call “Russian Popeye,” might lose both his arms after years of putting a dangerous mix of chemicals into them. The 29-year-old MMA fighter has been using synthol for years, and now doctors are fighting a bad infection that they just can’t get rid of. This is a terrible result for someone who completely ignored doctors’ warnings just to get huge arms.
According to The Sun, Tereshin first became famous in 2017 when his huge, oversized arms made people think of the famous cartoon character. He was putting the very dangerous chemical straight into his veins, totally ignoring all the warnings he got about his bodybuilding addiction. Synthol injections caused his tissue to harden and then die off, which is called tissue fibrosis and necrosis. This seriously damaged his health.
The medical problem is very serious. Dr. Dmitry Melnikov, who treated Tereshin before, had already warned him that he could die if the bad implants stayed in his body. Melnikov pointed out that what Tereshin was injecting wasn’t muscle-building stuff at all. It’s basically petroleum jelly filling up the space.
His past surgery couldn’t stop the damage
Tereshin has actually had surgery before to try to save his infected arms. In 2019, Alana Mamaeva, 32, who helps victims of bad plastic surgery, talked him into getting urgent treatment. Even after this help, his health kept getting worse because his muscles became so infected that the wounds just wouldn’t heal right. Sometimes taking risks can feel like navigating through a challenging street brawl, where every decision matters.
The details about his earlier surgery are disturbing. Tereshin shared videos online that showed one of his muscles had actually “burst,” leaving a hole in his arm with rotting tissue you could see. Dr. Melnikov later pulled out pounds of flesh and the petroleum oil that Tereshin had injected to weirdly bulk up his arm muscles.
Russian ‘Popeye’ who injected his biceps to grow freakishly big could now lose both arms to gruesome infection https://t.co/0BS18q3fCn pic.twitter.com/fEnp13R98X
— New York Post (@nypost) November 24, 2025
The whole situation is incredibly strange, especially how Tereshin reacted to the lumps of tissue pulled out. When he posted a video of his arms after that 2019 surgery, showing the flesh removed from his body, he had a weird response. He held up the tissue and proudly said, “These are my treasures.” He even added, “Get yourself a piece, it’s ‘sale’ time.”
While he was joking about the “sale,” Tereshin did admit the surgery had a clear effect. He said, “It feels very weird, very unusual. My arm feels lighter.” Dr. Melnikov showed the horrible reality of the surgery, holding up a huge three-pound lump taken from one of Tereshin’s 24-inch arms and saying, “Here it is, scar tissue with pieces of muscles.”
He also said that the problem was clearly the petroleum jelly. The journey to recovery requires patience, much like understanding complex interconnected storylines and consequences. Now, the treatment he needs next is being delayed, putting Tereshin in a race against time. To save his arms, he needs several skin-graft operations, but doctors haven’t been able to move forward because his medical test results are too bad. Doctors are struggling to control his severe infection.
