Children cool off in a fountain at VDNKh (The Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy), in Moscow, Russia, Monday, August 7, 2023. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)





Visitors examine the Big GUM's fountain filled with watermelons and melons at the State Department Store GUM, at the Red Square in Moscow, Russia, 08 August 2023. Five tons of summer fruits were used to decorate the fountain to celebrate the beginning of the watermelons season in Russia. Russia celebrates Watermelon Day on 03 August. (Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA/EFE)





A view shows a timber raft during transportation down the Angara River near the settlement of Strelka in the Krasnoyarsk Region, Russia on August 8, 2023. (Photo by Alexey Malgavko/Reuters)





A man poses for a picture with marble busts of Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin in a park in Moscow, Russia on August 8, 2023. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)





Military police and police officers guard an entrance of the side of the Zagorsk Optical and Mechanical Plant after the blast in the city of Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region, about 65 km (41miles) north-east of Moscow, Russia on Wednesday, August 9, 2023. An explosion Wednesday, on the grounds of a factory north of Moscow that makes optical equipment for Russia's security forces wounded dozens people, six of them severely, officials said. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)





Police and emergency vehicles parked at the side of the wreckage of the drone fell near the Karamyshevskaya embankment to the after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, August 11, 2023. The Mayor of Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin said a drone fell in western Moscow after it was shot down by air defense systems. Sobyanin said no-one was hurt when the drone fell near Karamyshevskaya embankment and that no serious damage was caused. Russian social media channels shared videos of what they said was a drone flying low above Moscow and of smoke rising above the Moscow river. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)





People pose for a picture on a stuffed bear during a town fair in the Siberian town of Yeniseysk in the Krasnoyarsk Region, Russia on August 12, 2023. (Photo by Alexey Malgavko/Reuters)





In this photo released by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service on Sunday, August 13, 2023, Emergency service workers give assistance in a flooded village in Primorye region, Russia's Far East after heavy downpours flooded villages in the region in the aftermath of Typhoon Khanun. Russian emergency officials say over 2,000 people have been evacuated from flooded areas of the Primorye region in the country's Far East. (Photo by Russian Emergency Ministry Press Service via AP Photo)





A man walks past a currency exchange office in Moscow, Russia, Monday, August 14, 2023. The Russian ruble has reached its lowest value since the early weeks of the war in Ukraine as Western sanctions weigh on energy exports and weaken demand for the national currency. The Russian currency passed 101 rubles to the dollar on Monday, continuing a more than 25% decline in its value since the beginning of the year. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)





Police officers stand guard at the scene of the wreckage of a drone at the "Moscow City" business district after a reported drone attack in Moscow, Russia, Friday, August 18, 2023. (Photo by AP Photo/Stringer)





A woman leans against the colonnade of the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (also known as the Victory Museum ) – the largest museum of military history in Russia at Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow on August 18, 2023. (Photo by Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP Photo)





In this pool photograph distributed by Sputnik agency, Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and Moscow's mayor Sergey Sobyanin (R) sit in a train as they attend a ceremony to launch the Line D3 of the Moscow Central Diametres (MCD) suburban railway network in Moscow on August 17, 2023. (Photo by Kristina Kormilitsyna/Pool via AFP Photo)





Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of Russia's leading election monitoring groups is escorted from a courtroom after a session in Moscow, Russia, Friday, August 18, 2023. A Moscow judge has formally arrested and detained Melkonyants on charges of being involved with an “undesirable” organization. Melkonyants faces up to six years in prison and will appear in a Moscow court. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)





A woman checks her phone next to debris, following a reported drone attack in Krasnogorsk, Russia on August 22, 2023. Russian air defences downed two attack drones near Moscow, the city's mayor said on August 22, in the fifth consecutive night of strikes on the capital region. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)





Participants, including members of Russia's Youth Army military-patriotic movement, gather around a large-size Russian state flag during an event marking National Flag Day in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, Crimea on August 22, 2023. (Photo by Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters)





Investigators work at the site of the place where the downed Ukrainian drone fell in Krasnogorsk, just outside Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, August 22, 2023. Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the Moscow region, said that two Ukrainian drones were shot down by air defenses on western outskirts of the Russian capital early Tuesday. (Photo by Moscow News Agency via AP Photo)





People inspect the damage sustained to a building of the Moscow International Business Center (Moskva City) following a drone attack in Moscow on August 23, 2023. A Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow damaged a building in a central business district, authorities said on August 23, in the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia's capital region. (Photo by Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP Photo)





Russian servicemen guard a road towards a private jet crash, near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, early Thursday, August 24, 2023. Officials say a private jet has crashed over Russia, killing all 10 people on board. Mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list, and Russia’s civil aviation agency says he was on board. (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)





A man lights a candle at an informal memorial next to the former 'PMC Wagner Centre' in St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, August 24, 2023, with a banner with words reading 'PMC Wagner, we are together' in the background. Russia's civil aviation agency says mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board a plane that crashed north of Moscow. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)





People pay tribute to Yevgeny Prigozhin at the makeshift memorial in front of the “PMC Wagner Centre” in Saint Petersburg, early on August 24, 2023. Russian state-run news agencies on August 23, 2023 said that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group that led a mutiny against Russia's army in June, was on the list of passengers of a plane that crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)