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)

“Lombard Street is an east-west street in San Francisco, California. Lombard Street is best known for the one-way section on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, in which the roadway has eight sharp turns (or switchbacks) that have earned the street the distinction of being the crookedest street in the world”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A single car drives down a typically crowded Lombard Street, San Francisco's crooked street, April 29, 2003 in San Francisco. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

To produce the images that convey his fatalistic and ironic approach to life, tinged with hope, he needed the environment and knowledge of Mother Russia, oiled with a bit of bribery to certain circus trainers. Enter the Great Russian Bear, the personification of Russia for the last several centuries, onto center stage and into his studio. The bear is recognized as both brutish and cute – Misha was the mascot for the 1980 Olympic Games – and has remained a symbol of Russia since Tsarist times. In 2009 it is the symbol of the United Russia Party.

Taken by photographer, Denis Budkov, 33, the Plosky Tolbachik is one of a cluster of volcanoes located in the Kamchatka Peninsula in the far east of Russia. After taking a lucky group of tourists to the crater of the flat volcano, the Russian photographer managed to get less than 300 metres away from the spurting jets of lava. Photo: The underground entrance to the volcano resembles a scene from the latest Hobbit movie. (Photo by Denis Budkov/Caters News)

People mourn at a makeshift memorial in front of the Russian embassy in Yerevan on March 23, 2024, a day after a gun attack on the Crocus City Hall in Russia's Krasnogorsk. Camouflaged assailants opened fire at the packed Crocus City Hall in Moscow's northern suburb of Krasnogorsk on March 22, 2024, evening ahead of a concert by Soviet-era rock band Piknik in the deadliest attack in Russia for at least a decade. Russia on March 23, 2024, said it had arrested 11 people – including four gunmen – over the attack on a Moscow concert hall claimed by Islamic State, as the death toll rose to 133 people. (Photo by Karen Minasyan/AFP Photo)

“A meteor streaked across the sky above Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and injuring more than 500 people (20 had been hospitalized in serious condition), many of them hurt by broken glass. “There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were OK”, said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, about 1500 kilometres (930 miles) east of Moscow, the biggest city in the affected region”. (Photo by Alexey Bulaew/RIA Nowosti)

“Romain de Tirtoff (23 November 1892 – 21 April 1990) was a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the pseudonym Erté, the French pronunciation of his initials, R.T. He was a diversely talented 20th-century artist and designer who flourished in an array of fields, including fashion, jewellery, graphic arts, costume and set design for film, theatre, and opera, and interior decor”. – Wikipedia. Photo: Romain de Tirtoff (Erte) – “Symphony In Black” (please click to enlarge).