“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)

A handout image released by the Taronga Zoo shows Veiled Chameleon hatchlings at Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, 11 March 2015. Taronga has welcomed more than 20 baby chameleons, with the last of three clutches of eggs hatching this week. Veiled Chameleons, or Chamaeleo calyptratus, are native to Saudi Arabia and Yemen and can live up to five years. (Photo by EPA/Taronga Zoo)

A participant of “Bread Procession of the Saint”, takes part in the ceremony in honor of Domingo de La Calzada Saint (1019-1109) who helped poor people and pilgrimage, in Santo Domingo de La Calzada, northern Spain, Wednesday, May 11, 2016. Every year during spring season, “Las Doncellas” (White Virgins), hold on their head a basket cover with white cloth while they walk past along of this old village in honor of the saint. (Photo by Alvaro Barrientos/AP Photo)

In this Tuesday, May 3, 2016 photo, Madeley Vasquez, 16, breast feeds her one-year-old son Joangel as she waits in line outside a supermarket to buy food in Caracas, Venezuela. Vasquez once ran down the block to avoid getting caught up in a knife fight that broke out when a woman was accused of cutting the line. (Photo by Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

Nepalese Hindu devotees take part in a bathing ritual on the last day of the month-long Swasthani Festival in the Hanumante River at Bhaktapur on the outskirts of Kathmandu on February 22, 2016. Devotees mark the Swasthani Festival with fasting, and with women in particular undertaking rituals in the hope of a prosperous life for her family and conjugal happiness. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/AFP Photo)

Residents walk past electoral posters in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 28, 2017. (Photo by Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters)

A man walks though Times Square in high heels during unseasonably warm weather on Christmas Eve in the Manhattan borough of New York December 24, 2015. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

Breath of an Arctic fox by Marco Gaiotti, Italy. Marco was watching this little Arctic fox as it incessantly called another nearby. Gradually he noticed the fox’s wet breath was quickly freezing in the air after each call. It was late winter in Spitsbergen, Svalbard, and the air was -35C (-31F). Photographing Arctic foxes is often frustrating, as they are normally running around fast in search of food, but this one was very relaxed and let Marco get close enough to focus on it, with the light glowing perfectly in the background. (Photo by Marco Gaiotti/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2021)