This Russian babushka is a new video streaming star
Seventy-seven-year-old Olga Ivanovna has nearly 250,000 followers on the ‘Twitch’ platform and regularly wins international streaming awards.
The Russian Internet knows her as ‘Babushka Olga’ (‘Grandma Olga’). She’s a well-known video streamer. During her live streams on ‘Twitch’, Olga Ivanovna plays different video games, mainly ‘Counter-Strike’, but also ‘Minecraft’, ‘Metro’, ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Bioshock’, ‘Atomic Heart’ and ‘Diablo 2’.
Her online popularity came from playing ‘Counter-Strike’, as a video of her skillfully taking down opponents in it went viral. “Folks, it must be all thanks to the new mouse,” the streamer commented with a smile about her luck.
Now, Olga Ivanovna is a true ‘Twitch Legend’, as she literally won this category at the ‘Stream Legends Awards of the Year’ (SLAY 2025) in December 2025.
On ‘Twitch’, she has nearly 250,000 followers, while, on ‘YouTube’, she’s got over 40,000.
What sparked particular interest is that for a Russian grandmother, a hobby like video gaming is extremely unexpected and rare.
She started streaming in 2021. As her grandson gave her a smartphone, she saw some game streams on ‘YouTube’ and decided to try it herself. “Retirement is very boring,” she says.
Her grandson also helped her set up the games and streams. At first, she streamed from a laptop and, later, her grandson saved up to buy her a computer. Over time, she acquired additional gear and famous streamer and blogger Slava Buster gifted her headphones, keyboards, some mice and a mousepad.
And her subscribers gifted her in-game ‘skins’, virtual items that change the appearance of her character or weapons. For example, gloves.
On her profile on ‘Twitch’, Olga shares details about herself and answers subscribers' questions: She worked her whole life as a food service engineering technologist. She lives in southern Russia (without specifying the city) and, in her free time away from gaming, she does household chores and cooks.
Olga admits: every morning she wakes up thinking she wants to stream more and spend time with her subscribers.
“When I play, I forget about everything; you could say I escape from worries, I learn control and explore the world of computer games, because there was nothing like this in my generation!”
