Scaffolding holding a remnant of the Soviet Union, the hammer and sickle, is seen on a rooftop of an abandoned building in the town of Pripyat on January 25, 2006 near Chernobyl, Ukraine. The town of Pripyat, deserted since the 1986 catastrophe, once housed 30,000 people, the majority of being workers from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Days after the catastrophe the inhabitants were relocated to other locations in the Soviet Union. The town of Pripyat has remained uninhabited since. Prypyat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous radioactive elements will take up to 900 years to decay sufficiently to render the area safe.

Tatyana Abramova, 33, plays with her home fox Plombir at her countryside house outside Siberian city of Novosibirsk on September 12, 2020. The official start of the Soviet experiment to better understand the domestication of animals by humans began in 1959, and was initiated by geneticists Dmitri Beliaiev and Lioudmila Trout on a farm in Akademgorodok, the scientific center of excellence in Siberia. Their primary objective was to domesticate foxes, to understand how the ancestor of wolves, another canine, evolved into a loyal and loving dog. And understand what this domestication tells us about the genetic evolution of species. (Photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP Photo)

An artist draws a mural on a wall during a wall painting competition in Amritsar on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Narinder Nanu/AFP Photo)

Primary school students write Chinese character “Ren”, meaning “human being”, during the First Writing Ceremony, a traditional education activity, on September 6, 2023 in Qingdao, Shandong Province of China. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

A herder sits amidst his camels at a cattle market in Lahore on June 3, 2025, ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP Photo)

An aerial view shows a fishing boat which capsized due to weather conditions by the coast in Banda Aceh, Indonesia on June 23, 2025. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

A demonstrator reacts during a rally following the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 2, 2020. (Photo by Brian Snyder/Reuters)

People ride on a front loader as they make their way through floodwaters following heavy rainfall in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China on July 23, 2021. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)