Just a few hours’ drive from the Belarus capital of Minsk, many villagers still live off the land. Nearly 80% of the country’s 9.5 million citizens live in urban areas, but for the rest, being close to nature can outweigh the hardships of country life. Here: Ekaterina Panchenya, 75, walks in the snow to her neighbour’s house, in the village of Pogost, Belarus. “I do everything myself: feed the animals in the barn, the chickens in the yard. The river is nearby, the forest, mushrooms and berries in the summer. No, I’ll never in my life move to town”, she said. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Panchenya is also skilled in local folk traditions such as floral embroidery, acappella choral singing and ancient pagan ceremonies, which survived the ideological whitewashing of the Soviet era. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Yulia Panchenya, 82, makes Easter cakes on the eve of Orthodox Easter in Pogost, Belarus. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Villagers take part in a ritual celebrating the pagan god Yurya, a time when they don national dress and make offerings out of colourful ribbons and paper in the hope of plentiful harvests in the future. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Family photos in wooden frames on display in Yulia Panchenya’s home. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Women gather for the May-time ritual in honour of the pagan god Yurya. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Ekaterina Panchenya visits her relatives’ graves during Orthodox Easter. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Villagers in national dress participate in the spring festival. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





An icon on display in Yulia Panchenya’s house. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Villagers buy food at the local grocery store. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Ekaterina, granddaughter of 75-year old Ekaterina Panchenya, bathes her daughter Dasha in a basin on a hot summer day. It was “cars, noise and dirt” and the sight of city dwellers standing in line to buy groceries that dissuaded her from leaving Pogost. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)





Boys play in the Stviga River on a hot summer day near the village of Pogost, Belarus, August 16, 2017. (Photo by Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters)