The article tries to provide empirical evidence for a hypothesis stated by Elisabeth Leiss in 2000, according to which aspect and article are not, as widely assumed, distinct from each other. Instead, Leiss claims that they are similar in function and only different in form. In order to find out whether there is a link between those two grammatical categories, I designed and conducted a survey among Russian speaking learners of the German language in the city and university of Barnaul. I asked them to translate German sentences into Russian in an online test. They were presented with pictures and entailed either preterit or perfect and a definite or indefinite article. I expected the participants to use perfective and imperfective aspect according to the Leiss’ hypothesis. After presenting and discussing the results of the survey, this empirical contribution closes with some critical remarks on the survey as well as some thoughts on the educational potential of the hypothesis, which was confirmed partially.