SEMYON GRIGORYEV/AFP/Getty Images    A handout photo taken on May 13, 2013, and provided by the Yakutsk-based Northeastern Federal University, shows a researcher working near a carcass of a female mammoth found on a remote island in the Arctic Ocean. Russian scientists claimed Wednesday they have discovered blood in the carcass of a woolly mammoth, adding that the rare find could boost their chances of cloning the prehistoric animal.

Good to hear, now and again, increasingly rare news of useful importance to the world of science coming out of Russia. It is more than a little dispiriting to read about the corruption of Vladimir Putin, his personal stakes and immense wealth in the country's energy giant, Rosneft, and his various sumptuous mansions built courtesy of the Russian taxpayer, let alone his sale of advanced, powerful military hardware to the murderous regime of Syria.

Speaking of Sochi, and the upcoming 2014 winter Olympics which has sent Russia off in a frenzy of infrastructure building to meet the challenge of hosting the Olympics in a manner that meant to convince the world of Russia's might and prominence in the world as a still-lingering world power, the news that corruption on a grand scale has taken place there, should arrest the attention of Russians, aghast over the waste of $30-billion into the pockets of corrupt officials, but likely will not.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, listens to Jean-Claude Killy, Chairman of the IOC Coordination Commission for Sochi 2014, during a February summit. (Alexei Druzhinin/RIA-Novosti/Associated Press )

Oh, and there is also the trifling matter of Kremlin-and-Putin-accusing assassinated journalists, and the charges brought against former energy entrepreneur Mikhail Khodorovsky, jailed, while Putin raided Yukos and absorbed it into his own holdings. Ample evidence, if any was needed, that even one of the wealthiest men in the world can be brought low and deprived of all he owns if he comes afoul of an scheming, hubris-ridden tyrant.

Russian science and its scientists are as enterprising and brilliant as those of any other nation, and then some, and that does go some way to restoring a certain level of trust in the country itself, if not in so many of its its leaders, and the bulk of Russians who appreciate being led by one of their traditional 'strongmen'; brutal, anti-human-rights oppressors. There is the commendable collaboration by Russian astrophysicists and astronauts with that of the international space community.

A kind of sane balancing, it could be said, lingering yet under the heel of Vladimir Putin. Enough of him, though. The recent discovery by Russian scientists of a perfectly preserved woolly mammoth carcass -- yes, yet another one -- this one intact to an amazing degree, has focused world attention on Russia's far frozen north. The carcass, found on an island in the Arctic Ocean, which is hastening its opening due to the melting of great ice masses, was discovered with muscle tissue in perfect condition.

"The fragments of muscle tissues, which we've found out of the body, have a natural red colour of fresh meat", explained Semyon Grigoryev, head of the Mammoth Museum and leader of the expedition into the Lyakhovsky Islands off the coast of Siberia. Moreover, it was discovered that within the carcass lay liquid blood; nature may have equipped those mammals with a natural source of de-icer to help them survive the glacial conditions that prevailed.

"The blood is very dark, it was found  in ice cavities below the belly and when we broke these cavities with a poll pick, the blood came running out", Mr. Grigoryev explained, in a statement released by the North-Eastern Federal University, in Yakutsk. Those mammoths were thought to have lived until ten thousand years ago, though the scientific world seems to believe they may have lived a little longer in Siberia.

The fluid blood may lead to the potential of cloning the animal if living cells can be successfully extracted for use. Fascinating. Science and its curiosities. But nothing, whatever, exceeds the exploratory, research curiosity of a scientist's imagination. The bronze figures of woolly mammoths that often stand fronting national museums of science would likely suffice to fuel most peoples' imaginations.