A woman walks between Christmas trees at a Christmas market opened prior to incoming Christmas and New Year festivities in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, December 15, 2023. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

Final-year student Alina Repkina prepares for a livestream of the Last Bell ceremony for school leavers at secondary school No 11 in Rostov-On-Don, Russia on May 30, 2020. It is the first time in Russia that such ceremonies have been held via video link due to the coronavirus lockdown restrictions. (Photo by Valery Matytsin/TASS)

First year cadets of the Vladivostok branch of Russian Internal Affairs Ministry's Far Eastern Law Institute march in formation during a ceremony to take oath of allegiance at a monument to Internal Affairs Ministry officers who lost their lives in line of duty in Vladivostok, Russia on September 24, 2021. 27 cadets took oath of allegiance during the ceremony. (Photo by Yuri Smityuk/TASS)

Photographer Alexander Lepeshkin spends whole nights at Clumba parties, or costume parties where the young creatives of Russia put on their most flashy and drink. His photos capture candid moments of alcohol-enhanced connections and collapses, but he says he’s not a party photographer – he’s a youth photographer. Photo: A Loshadka party in St. Petersburg, 2010. (Photo by Alexander Lepeshkin)

Tupolev Tu-142MK, a Soviet and Russian maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft flies above a statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin during a rehearsal of the Naval parade in St.Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, July 28, 2022. The celebration of Navy Day in Russia is traditionally marked on the last Sunday of July and will be celebrated on July 31 this year. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

These adrenaline-junkie climbers go to extraordinary lengths, and heights, to take a selfie. Hundreds of metres above the ground, the climbers risk their life and liberty as they scale huge structures and photograph the results. Known as urban exploration, the aim is to find extremely high and almost inaccessible city buildings and reach their dizzying summits. (Photo by Yaroslav Segeda/Solent News)

A woman walks in a street in freezing weather of –24 degrees Celsius in Omsk, Russia on January 13, 2021. Daytime temperatures have been below –20 degrees Celsius in the Omsk Region since 25 December 2020. (Photo by Yevgeny Sofiychuk/TASS)

People take pictures near a Soviet flag flying on an embankment in Saint Petersburg, Russia on June 17, 2023. The flags of Russia, the USSR, and the Russian Empire were installed on the shore to mark the anniversaries of each flag's adoption. (Photo by Anton Vaganov/Reuters)