Children carrying guns and flags or wearing Soviet-style uniforms have become a common sight at Victory Day parades and other events in Russian-controlled Crimea. Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have warned that such displays point to a growing trend of promoting Russian patriotism among kids on the Crimean peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Here: A young Crimean girl wears military-type clothes during a Victory Day celebration in Sevastopol on May 9, 2018. (Photo by Oleksandra Surgan/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

In a photo taken on September 11, 2019, North Korean students pose for photos in Chonji lake, or “Heaven lake”, as they visit the crater of Mount Paektu, near Samjiyon. Mount Paektu has long been considered the spiritual birthplace of the Korean nation and is a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of North Koreans every year, who are trained from birth to revere their leaders. (Photo by Ed Jones/AFP Photo)

A competitor tries to swipe away some grease as he slips off the “gostra”, a pole covered in grease, during the celebrations for the religious feast of St Julian, patron of the town of St Julian's, outside Valletta August 30, 2015. In the traditional “gostra”, a game stretching back to the Middle Ages, young men, women and children have to make their way to the top of a pole and try to uproot one of the flags to win prizes. Photo by Darrin Zammit Lupi/Reuters)

The Rio de Janeiro Olympics kick off on August 5 for some two weeks of competitive games drawing athletes as well as audiences from around the world. As they prepare to cover the event, Reuters photographers look back on their favourite pictures from past Olympics where they captured the action on the ground as well as the participants' tears and joy that followed. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

A woman jumps over a fire during the celebration of the summer solstice at a festival in the village of Okunevo in Omsk region, Russia on June 22, 2025. (Photo by Alexey Malgavko/Reuters)

A dachshund dressed as a leo walks a podium during a dachshund parade festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, September 16, 2023. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

The anthropometric record card of Sarah Giles, a servant who was convicted of stealing in 1897, on display making up part of a mosaic of cards on a table top during a press preview for the Crime Museum Uncovered exhibition at the Museum of London in the City of London, Wednesday, October 7, 2015. Drawn from Scotland Yard's private collection, the show charts more than a century of violence and suffering, from the murders of Jack the Ripper to IRA and al-Qaida bombings. But it also celebrates the brains, bravery and scientific advances that helped catch perpetrators and solve crimes. (Photo by Alastair Grant/AP Photo)

Hundreds of people from a range of NGOs and campaign groups protest to demand the immediate restoration of nature at DEFRA – Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs on September 28, 2023 in London, England. The 2023 State of Nature Report revealed that approximately one in six species in Great Britain, including turtle doves and hazel dormice, are at risk of extinction, citing climate change, intensive farming, and pollution as major threats, with a 19% average decline in monitored plant and animal populations since 1970. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)