Domestic tourists visit the beach at Wonsan Kalma Coastal Tourist Area in Wonsan, North Korea's Kangwon Province on July 1, 2025. North Korea opened a massive resort area on its east coast, state media said on July 2, with the tourism pet project of leader Kim Jong Un reportedly set to welcome Russian guests later this month. (Photo by Kim Won Jin/AFP Photo)

A doll dressed in Ukraine's national dress lies on the floor amid broken glass inside a kindergarten destroyed by a missile strike, in Kyiv on July 10, 2024, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Russia struck cities across Ukraine on July 8, 2024, with a missile barrage that killed 33 people and ripped open a children's hospital in Kyiv. (Photo by Anatolii Stepanov/AFP Photo)

Moscow riot policemen detain an activist during an unauthorized protest anti-Putin opposition rally to defend Article, 31 of the Russian Constitution which guarantees the right of assembly, in Triumfalnaya Square in Central Moscow, Russia, on December, 31, 2011 (Photo by Konstantin Zavrazhin/Getty Images)

Photo by: Sergey A.; Source: LiveJournal

Combine harvesters work on a wheat field of the Solgonskoye farming company near the village of Talniki, southwest from Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia, August 27, 2015. Russia, one of the world's top wheat exporters, will harvest its third-largest grain crop in post-Soviet history this year, leading Russian consultancy SovEcon said on August 27 after upgrading its forecast. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Ralph Mirebs, an urban explorer and photographer in Russia, has revealed extraordinary photos of Soviet space shuttle prototypes gathering dust in an abandoned hangar. The abandoned hangar is located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which is still in operation today (with the close of NASA’s shuttle program, Russian Soyuz shuttles are the only way for astronauts to reach the International Space Station). The Buran prototype shuttles found by Mirebs, however, are from an earlier era – they are the last remnants of a space program that began in 1974 and was finally shuttered in 1993. (Photo by Ralph Mirebs/Exclusivepix Media)

Lake Baikal is the world's oldest lake, at 25 million years (possibly older), and deepest, averaging 744.4 metres (2,442 ft).

Located in the south of the Russian region of Siberia, between Irkutsk Oblast to the northwest and the Buryat Republic to the southeast, it is the most voluminous freshwater lake in the world, containing roughly 20% of the world's unfrozen surface fresh water.

ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli looks on after landing back on Earth from their Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft on May 24, 2011 in Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. The mission of the Soyuz TMA-20 was launched last December to the International Space Station with the flight engineers Catherine Coleman from the United States, Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli. The next expedition is expected to launch this June. (Photo by Stephane Corvaja/ESA via Getty Images)