There was an interesting comment on this vid by Valentyn Mykolajovych, from Antonov,

Этот борт 13.01.1989 года во время взлета в Адене (Йемен) из-за преждевременной уборки шасси потерпел аварию. В течение 8 месяцев восстанавливали на месте и 12.12.1989 года своим ходом перегнан на капитальный ремонт в Киев. С тех он у нас, в КБ "Антонов".
Практически все транспортники имеют свои аналоги (Ан-12 и С-130, Ан-124 и С-5), а для Ан-22 и Ан-225 аналогов нет.
Спасибо за видео, TopFelya!

This aircraft crashed during takeoff on 13.01.1989 in Aden (Yemen) due to premature retraction of the landing gear. Within 8 months it was repaired on the spot and on 12/12/1989, under its own power, was returned to Kiev for major repairs. Since then, it is with us, at the Antonov Design Bureau.
Almost all cargo planes have their western analogues (An-12 and C-130, An-124 and C-5), but there are no analogues for the An-22 or An-225.
Thanks for the video, TopFelya!

That's some serious old school cold war behemoth sky crabbing.

A few years ago I had lunch at a restaurant with my extended family for some event (can't recall specifically), and as we were standing around talking in the parking lot afterwards, the AN-225 flew over us. We were pretty close to the airport and it was either landing or taking off, so it was quite low to the ground and surprised the hell out of us. We didn't have the slightest idea what it was, but the configurations of the landing gears and six jets made it clear it was damned unusual. Found out later that the beast was one-of-a-kind and a bunch of people were at the airport watching for it, which made it clear how lucky we were to randomly catch that.

I had no idea there was a propeller-based counterpart. I don't know enough about aerodynamics to understand how stacking the propellers like that makes any sense, so I'm just going to assume it's some sort of Soviet technomagic.

Counter-rotating propellers sparked my curiosity when I first saw them on a British Seafire Mk46 at a flight show in the early nineties.

So my amateur's answer would be that it's about the problem of turning the engine's power into thrust. With increasing power, you can either increase the propeller's RPM or its area. So you either a) spin it faster, b) increase its diameter, c) use a more favourable blade geometry, d) add more blades.

a) and b) both lead to blade tips moving faster, and once they approach the speed of sound, wave drag sets in and ruins your day. b) also runs into issues in terms of ground clearance. Thus the Kim Jong-un blades on planes like the An-70: short and fat.

c) is rather difficult to do in terms of manufacture -- that's why more pronounced blade shapes are a relatively recent development.

d) on a single propeller decreases the efficiency of each blade as it passes through the previous blade's vortex. That's why, for instance, German planes in WW2 almost exclusively relied on 3-bladed propellers with increasing blade size, whereas Supermarine went to four and even 5 blades rather quickly. You can work the issue to a certain degree by modifying the blade geometry, thus the 8 blade props on a modern A400M.

Adding more blades by adding another propeller gets around d), although the aft prop still loses efficiency compared to the front prop. On the other hand, counter-rotating props massively reduces problems with torque, which can be rather horrendous for single engine prop planes. The Bf 109, for instance, is (in)famous for being difficult during take-off as it pulls to the side quite violently.

For Sasha...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEkzidtTkx8