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It was an incredible act of heroism as one Russian man risked his life to swim through frozen water to save a stranded dog.

All accounts of the story are in Russian, which may make the story a little hard to translate into English, but it seems three men were on the side of the road, due to their vehicle breaking down.

One of the men, Dvorenkov Ilya happened to see the man in the frozen water. He got out of his car and immediately started filming.

The 21-year-old man was literally crushing the ice with his hand as he waded to the struggling dog.

While there is not much known about the man, reports are saying his name is Ivan and lives in the small village in the sawmill suburb where the video is shot. Ilya says after Ivan rescued the dog, he says Ivan asked for him to take him to the store for some vodka.

The story seems to have a good ending. Ivan decided to keep the dog and named him Rex.

The gif is going viral on social media outlets, like this reddit thread.

While the story is new to reddit, it seems as if versions of the video were uploaded to YouTube as early as April 2014.