U.S. First Lady Melania Trump smiles as she holds a football thrown to her by U.S. President Donald Trump during his joint news conference with Russia's President Vladimir Putin after a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. (Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Russia's figure skater Alexandra Trusova performs in a show at the CSKA arena in Moscow on February 14, 2023. (Photo by Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP Photo)

A woman gets a throat swab during a public COVID testing outside a shopping mall on Sunday, May 22, 2022, in Beijing. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

Girls in ballet dresses pose near St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower in Red Square in central Moscow, Russia on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

A woman poses for a picture near an ice hole as a man takes a dip during celebrations of the Orthodox Christian feast of Epiphany in the settlement of Ivanovskoye in the Moscow region, Russia on January 19, 2022. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)

An Israeli soldier argues with a demonstrator wrapped in a Palestinian flag during a protest against Israeli settlements in Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on June 6, 2022. (Photo by Raneen Sawafta/Reuters)

A calico sits in its enclosure and suns itself in Hessen, Germany on May 28, 2021. The Opel Zoo presents a walk-in Madagascar aviary for caltas and varis. The primate species is native to Madagascar and is threatened with extinction. (Photo by Andreas Arnold/dpa)

In modern Russia there are no free elections, therefore the political elite is almost constant.

Photo: Valentina Matvienko, Mayor of St. Petersburg, attends the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 17, 2011 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Global business leaders have gathered in Russia for the three-day conference. (Photo by Alexander Aleshkin/Epsilon/Getty Images)