Yesterday, a Russian Telegram group leaked the first photos of a Nintendo Switch 2 right out of the box one week ahead of its launch.

Now, Fedor Volkov, the leaker and owner of this early set has come forward to share how he got the console so early. Volkov claimed that he saw someone posting on Telegram about a Nintendo Switch 2 order arriving in Russia on May 26. When asked, the seller explained that the consoles were being flown in from Dubai, UAE.

Volkov wrote to the seller, saying that he wanted to buy one for his podcast and promised not to resell it. After 10 minutes, the seller wrote back to Volkov, saying that he knew someone with an extra Switch 2 on a flight arriving much sooner. Volkov bought the Switch 2 for USD800 (the US SRP is USD450).

When asked why he dared to show his face on camera, Volkov said that he’s not afraid of Nintendo because he is in Russia and the company can’t do anything to him since they no longer have a presence there, and he plans to connect his Switch 2 to the internet on launch day (June 5) so they can’t track him down:

“I thought about it first, like, ‘Whoa, what if they’re gonna, like, ban my Switch account?’ I didn’t sign any NDAs. I bought this with my money. I bought, it I didn’t steal it or something like that. Also, Nintendo is from Japan, you know, and they don’t have any official shops in Russia anymore. They don’t have a jurisdiction in Russia.

It’s not like we want to show that, ‘Oh, we got a Switch 2, you didn’t get a Switch 2. No, we just want to show you, like, some content and show that even in Russia, we have a lot of sanctions, you know, a lot of big companies banned us, yeah, yeah, but we want to show all the world that Russia also has, like, just some guys that just want to play video games.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.