Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's broadcast region and beyond for the 50th week of 2014. For more photo galleries, see our "Picture This" archive.
Photos Of The Week #50
1
A choir of cadets from the Baltic Naval Institute sing the Russian national anthem during an event called "I love Russia" in Kaliningrad. (TASS/Vitaly Nevar)
2
People dressed as Grandfather Frost and Snow Maiden taking part in a contest at a winter festival in Minsk. (Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko)
3
Pakistani Muslim devotees perform at the shrine of Sufi Saint Syed Ali bin Osman Al-Hajvery, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, during the annual "Urs" religious festival in Lahore on December 12. (AFP/Arif Ali)
4
Tourists cross a footbridge in the historical part of Tbilisi, Georgia, on December 12. (Reuters/David Mdzinarishvili)
5
Afghan pedestrians walk past as a young beggar asks for alms in Kabul. (AFP/Wakil Kohsar)
6
Displaced Syrian children stand in muddy water after heavy rains in the Bab Al-Salama camp for people fleeing the violence in Syria, on the border with Turkey. (AFP/Baraa al-Halabi)
7
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko poses for a selfie with a member of the Ukrainian community in Sydney, Australia. (TASS/Mikhail Palinchak/Ukrainian presidential press service)
8
A man dressed as Father Frost walks with Siberian Huskies in a park during an annual Christmas Fair in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
9
A young Pakistani woman demonstrates her shooting skills during the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa All-Pakistan Shooting Challenge in Peshawar. (epa/Bilawal Arbab)
10
A contractor drags his bag out of a housing complex at Forward Operating Base Gamberi, which remains part of the ongoing Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan's Laghman Province. (Reuters/Lucas Jackson)
11
Ukrainian servicemen stand guard at the besieged airport in the eastern city of Donetsk. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said a "real" cease-fire was in place in Ukraine for the first time since the conflict in the east erupted seven months ago. (AFP/Anatoliy Stepanov)
13
The polluted area caused by an oil spill is seen at the Evrona desert reserve, near the Red Sea resort city of Eilat. Ecologists say it could take years to clean up the massive oil spill that flooded the Israeli nature reserve with up to 5 million liters of crude and which threatens to spread to the Red Sea shore and neighboring Jordan. (Reuters/Baz Ratner)
14
Jamie O'Brien of the United States in action during the semifinal of the Billabong Men's Pipe Masters Invitational surfing event, the final stop of the ASP World Championship Tour in Haleiwa, Hawaii. (epa/Kelly Cestari)
15
Frost covers the mask and part of the hat of a soldier of China's People's Liberation Army as he stands guard near the border of China and Russia in Heilongjiang Province.(Reuters)
16
Pakistani schoolgirls offer prayers for Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai during a school assembly in Mingora in the Swat Valley. (AFP/A. Majeed)
17
Heavy fog covers streets in the small town of Zaslavl, northwest of Minsk, Belarus. (Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko)
18
Pro-Russian separatists from the so-called Chechen "Death" battalion photographed during a training exercise on territory controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)
19
Abbas Alizada, who calls himself the Afghan Bruce Lee, poses in front of the destroyed Darul Aman Palace in Kabul. (Reuters/Mohammad Ismail)
20
A worker poses at a factory that produces Christmas decorations in Yiwu, Zhejiang Province, China. (Reuters/China Daily)
21
Iranian Kurdish Peshmerga members prepare for military exercises in Koya, 100 kilometers north of Irbil, Iraq. (AFP/Safin Hamed)
22
Young Filipino typhoon victims swim in a swelling river in the typhoon-hit town of Taft, Samar island, Philippines. Typhoon Hagupit killed at least 27 people and displaced more than 1 million people in the eastern and central provinces. (epa/Francis R. Malasig)
23
A boy pushes a donkey cart loaded with bundles of cotton blooms that were collected by female cotton pickers in Meeran Pur village, north of Karachi, Pakistan. (Reuters/Akhtar Soomro)
24
Women survey damage in a flat after it was destroyed by shelling the night before in the Kuibishevskiy district of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. (AFP/Eric Feferberg)
25
An Iraqi Christian boy, forced to flee from advancing Islamic State militants, finds shelter at a refugee camp in a shopping center in Irbil. (epa/Darek Delmanowicz)
26
A man and a child walk in the snow at the destroyed war memorial at Savur-Mohyla, a hill east of the city of Donetsk, Ukraine. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)