I'm skeptical. The clothes thing doesn't make sense, unless the cutting of the cuffs was more of a ceremonial thing, but they actually could take the cuffs off daily to put on/off clothes on their upper body?
My brain is imagining this scenario as a personal experiment that got more public attention than they were expecting and had to make up lies on the spot.
Interviewer: So what do you do for a living?
Pustovitova: I'm a....*looks in the interviewer's eyes*...umm...eye...eyelash...*looks around and sees someone on a computer*technolo...technician. An eyelash technician.
The Keyser Söze of millennials.