Aerial view of Skanderbeg Square in Tirana, lit with Christmas decorations and surrounded by an open Christmas market on December 29, 2021. (Photo by Gent Shkullaku/AFP Photo)

Every year, in the Rostov region of Russia, a group of 40 young and not so young rural workers compete in the Bison Track Show, or more affectionately known as: Russian Flying Tractor Racing. In front of crowds numbering up to 30,000 people, a series of smoke spilling, monstrous farming machines tear round an 8km mud track, plowing through lakes and dirt mounds, their turbos screaming and tyres scrabbling to find grip.

An employee walks near a rotary dredge which works on the coal face of the Borodinsky opencast colliery, near the Siberian town of Borodino, east of Krasnoyarsk, December 9, 2014. The Borodinsky colliery, 9 km (5.6 miles) long and more than 100 meters (328 feet) deep, annually produces more than 20 million tons of coal and is considered to be the biggest opencast coal mine in Russia, according to official representatives. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A Husky dog looks on before a sled and skijoring race in the village of Kadnikovo outside Yekaterinburg, Russia, December 10, 2016. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Fire fighters, emergency service vehicles and a helicopter in Moskovsky Prospekt at the entrance to Tekhnologichesky Institut station of the St Petersburg metro in the aftermath of an explosion which occurred in a train at 14:40 Moscow timeon April 3, 2017. (Photo by Peter Kovalev/TASS)

A woman applies lipstick in a car that is parked at a beach facing a volcanic rock called Devil's Finger outside Yuzhno-Kurilsk, the main settlement on the Southern Kurile island of Kunashir September 15, 2015. Russian residents of the island chain at the centre of a dispute between Japan and Russia that has held up a treaty to formally end World War Two hope a diplomatic solution will lure tourists and investment to help refurbish rickety infrastructure. The Southern Kuriles are referred to in Japan as the Northern Territories. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A participant has her body painted before a local bodybuilding and fitness championship in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, March 5, 2016. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Yakutsk, with a population of around 270,000, holds its own title: that of the coldest city on Earth. Here: Frost-encrusted house in the city centre. (Photo by Amos Chapple/Courtesy Images/RFE/RL)