A military band playing during the Immortal Regiment march in Vladivostok, Russia on May 9, 2016. The celebrations marked the 71st anniversary of the defeat of Germany in WWII. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS/Getty Images)

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad watches as Pope John Paul II boards his plane at Damascus airport May 8, 2001 at the end of the Pontiff's four-day visit to Syria.

A woman walks past posters bearing the letter “Z” in the colours of the ribbon of Saint George, which has become a symbol of support for Russian military action in Ukraine, and reading “We are proud of Russia! We are not ashamed!” at a bus stop on Nevsky Prospekt in central Saint Petersburg on March 15, 2022. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

A boy shoots a World War II ages machine gun with blanks at a weapon exhibition during a military show in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, July 10, 2022. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A model wears a creation for the Rick Owens ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2023 fashion collection presented Thursday, September 29, 2022 in Paris. (Photo by Francois Mori/AP Photo)

Britain's Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall watches a performance during a salsa school visit in Havana, Cuba March 26, 2019. (Photo by Phil Noble/Reuters)

Children carrying guns and flags or wearing Soviet-style uniforms have become a common sight at Victory Day parades and other events in Russian-controlled Crimea. Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have warned that such displays point to a growing trend of promoting Russian patriotism among kids on the Crimean peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Here: A young Crimean girl wears military-type clothes during a Victory Day celebration in Sevastopol on May 9, 2018. (Photo by Oleksandra Surgan/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

A municipal worker sits on a bench, next to a statue, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, during the 2018 soccer World Cup, Thursday, June 28, 2018. Nizhny Novgorod was a “closed city” during the Soviet era. It was known as Gorky until 1990 and it was here that dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov was held under house arrest. Now the city hosts six World Cup matches and is teeming with tourists. That was unthinkable in the Soviet era and even rare now in a city that is seldom visited by outsiders. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)