“What did I know about Chechnya before last week? For someone who grew up in the 1990s the very word Chechnya meant a string of grainy images on TV showing people in battered camouflage outfits, shooting at each other amid destruction and ruin. Fear, wahhabis, Shamil Basayev, terrorism, mountains: these were the words that used to spring to my mind when someone mentioned Chechnya”. – Maxim Shemetov. Photo: Special forces officers stand guard during a government-organised event marking Chechen language day in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny April 25, 2013. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

Costumed revelers walk through a street prior to the carnival parade in the village of Vevcani, in the southwestern part of North Macedonia, on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the usual carnival celebrations which have been taken place for centuries in the tiny North Macedonian town of Vevcani. A few hundred locals gathered at the small town square to celebrate the carnival, but police dispersed the gathering after a brief scuffle with a small group. No arrests or injuries were reported. (Photo by Boris Grdanoski/AP Photo)

A team of female cadets takes part in a tug-of-war competition at Budyonny Military Academy of the Signal Corps in St Petersburg, Russia on March 7, 2021. (Photo by Peter Kovalev/TASS/Profimedia)

Hannah Prock, of Austria, prepares to start the luge women's singles run 1 at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Monday, February 7, 2022, in the Yanqing district of Beijing. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

A worker pushes a wheelbarrow past a mural in Doha on November 8, 2022, ahead of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup football tournament. (Photo by Gabriel Bouys/AFP Photo)

“Teenager Teenager”, an installation by the collaborative Chinese artists Sun Yuan and Peng Yu, at the exhibition “Crazy. Madness in contemporary art” in Rome on February 18, 2022. (Photo by Gloria Imbrogno/LiveMedia/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Members of the Apocalyptic Marauders group in their post-apocalyptic outfits and gear, including a flame thrower in Henrichenburg, Waltrop, Germany on August 13, 2023. Steampunk fans, groups and visitors, many in retro-futuristic or Victorian inspired outfits, have fun on the second day of the Steampunk Jubilee Festival weekend at the historic Henrichenburg boat lift, a listed industrial heritage site landmark. (Photo by Imageplotter/Alamy Live News)

A young migrant runs through the Peace Oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito shelter where migrants sleep on the floor on mats in Villahermosa, Mexico, late Friday, June 7, 2024. After the head of Mexico's immigration agency ordered a halt to deportations in December, migrants have been left in limbo as authorities round up migrants across the country and dump them in the southern Mexican cities of Villahermosa and Tapachula. (Photo by Felix Marquez/AP Photo)