Russian Police detain opposition supporters during a “March of Millions” protest rally against Vladimir Putin's return in Moscow, Russia on May 6, 2012. Over 650 people were arrested including opposition leaders. (Photo by Dmitry Schedrin, Rustem Adagamov, Andrey Stenin)

A demonstrator with face painted in the colours of the Palestinian flag protests outside the Israeli Embassy in west London July 26, 2014. Foreign ministers from the United States, Europe and the Middle East called on Saturday for an extension of the 12-hour ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. (Photo by Luke MacGregor/Reuters)

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)

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.

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)

These Northern Lights “rainbows” have turned the sky greener than the Earth below. Vitaly Istomin, 26, spent several nights in freezing conditions under the stars in northern Russia’s Khibiny Mountains to capture the aurora’s “rainbows”. (Photo by Vitaly Istomin/Caters News Agency)

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)