Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's coverage area and beyond for the second week of 2018. For more photo galleries, see our Picture This archive.
Photos Of The Week #2
1
Waiters, marking the holiday season and wearing T-shirts with an image of Russian President Vladimir Putin dressed as Santa Claus, pose for a picture at the New York coffee bar in central Krasnoyarsk, Russia. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
2
A Syrian girl plays in Raqqa, the former "capital" of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria. (AFP/Delil Souleiman)
3
Czech candidate Michal Horacek is prepped for the last debate in Prague before the first round of the country's presidential election on January 12-13. (Reuters/David W Cerny)
4
An opposition fighter fires artillery from a village near Al-Tamanah during ongoing battles with government forces in Syria's Idlib Province. (AFP/Omar Haj Kadour)
5
Iraqi girls walk holding their national flag toward a ceremony for the reopening of the Bab al-Saray market in the Old City of Mosul. (AFP/Ahmad Muwafaq)
6
A church and the remains of an ancient village usually covered by water are seen inside the reservoir of Sau in Vilanova de Sau, Catalonia, Spain. (AP/Emilio Morenatti)
7
A worker stack bricks on his head at a factory in Bhaktapur, Nepal. (Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)
8
A Russian man rammed an armored personnel carrier into a shop window before he climbed through the rubble to steal a bottle of wine, in the town of Apatity. (Reuters/Albert Borkin)
9
Indian soldiers take part in a laughter yoga session during a rehearsal for a Republic Day parade in New Delhi. (Reuters/Adnan Abidi)
10
A woman mourns as she holds the body of her 2-year-old son at a medical center in the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, Syria (Reuters/Bassam Khabieh)
11
Burqa-clad Afghan women walk in the old part of Herat. (AFP/Hoshang Hashimi)
12
People break traditional Christmas bread to mark the Orthodox Christmas Day festivities in Belgrade, Serbia, on January 7. Children traditionally scramble for a piece of the bread, searching for a gold coin hidden inside. (AP/Darko Vojinovic)
13
The St. Lambertus church in Erkelenz-Immerath, in western Germany, is demolished in order to make way for the mining of brown coal. Residents of the village of Immerath were previously relocated, as the area is to be exploited by German energy supplier RWE Power in an extension of their Tagebau Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine. (AFP/Federico Gambarini)
14
A man pushes his way through a winter snowstorm in Atlantic City, New Jersey. (AP/Matt Rourke)
15
Bosnian Serb women, seen through flames, attend a ceremonial burning of dried oak branches during an Orthodox Christmas Eve religious service in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. (AP/Amel Emric)
16
A Syrian girl who was injured in a bombardment cries as she receives treatment at a makeshift hospital in the besieged rebel-held town of Douma on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. The deadliest of Syrian regime and Russian air strikes on the Eastern Ghouta region hit the Hammuriyeh district on January 6, leaving 12 civilians dead, including two children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. (AFP/ Hamza Al-Ajweh)
17
Ukrainian servicemen fire artillery in the direction of positions of Russia-back separatists near Novoluhanske in the eastern Donetsk region on January 11. (Reuters/Maksim Levin)
18
Two Syrian sisters run across rubble to embrace after finding each other alive following an air strike on Hamouria, in the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, on January 9. (AFP/Abdulmonam Eassa)
19
A girl peers through a door in Syria's devastated city of Raqqa. (AFP/Delil Souleiman)
20
Japanese women wearing kimonos ride an escalator at a subway station after attending their Coming of Age Day ceremony in Tokyo. (Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon)
21
An Orthodox follower of the Moscow Patriarchate attacks a Ukrainian protester wearing a mask depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kyiv. (epa-EFE/Sergey Dolzhenko)
22
An injured man bleeds as he lies inside a hospital after air strikes on Douma, Syria. Reports said at least 12 people were killed in several air strikes on Douma. (epa-EFE/Mohammed Badra)
23
People climb mountain near Skopje while the Macedonian capital is covered by smog and heavy air pollution. (epa-EFE/Georgi Licovski)
24
An Indian monk smokes at Babughat transit camp ahead of Ganga Sagar annual Sikh fair in Kolkata. (epa-EFE/Piyal Adhikary)
25
A man participates in a Christmas-tree-throwing competition in the County Clare town of Ennis, Ireland. (Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne)