Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's coverage area and beyond for the 52nd week of 2018. For more photo galleries, see our photo gallery archive.
Photos Of The Week #52
1
A bright blue light bathed New York City after a transformer explosion at an electric power station in the borough of Queens. (Melissa Coffey/via Reuters)
2
People take pictures of balloons being released in downtown Sao Paulo as part of year-end celebrations. (Reuters/Paulo Whitaker)
3
A man climbs a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico. Discouraged by the long wait to apply for asylum through official ports of entry, many Central American migrants are choosing to cross the U.S. border wall and hand themselves in to border patrol agents. (AP/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)
4
A paraglider flies over the snow-covered Alp mountains during sunny weather near the Bavarian winter sport village of Oberstdorf, in southern Germany. (AFP/Christof Stache)
5
A girl poses at the decorations during Christmas celebrations in Chisinau, Moldova, on December 25. (epa-EFE/Dumitru Doru)
6
A man leads a camel at a beach during sunset in Karachi, Pakistan. (epa-EFE/Rehan Khan)
7
Migrants gather on the deck of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms vessel after being rescued in the central Mediterranean Sea, before disembarking at the port of Crinavis in Algeciras, Spain. Other European countries such as Italy, Malta, and Greece had closed their ports to the ship. Only Spain admitted entry. (AP/Olmo Calvo)
8
Russian emergency rescue workers dressed as Ded Moroz (Santa Claus or Father Frost ) scale the wall of a children's hospital in Moscow. (AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
9
A Kashmiri man walks past icicles created by water from a leaking supply pipe in the Tangmarg area of north Kashmir, some 30 kilometers from Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir. The Kashmir Valley is witnessing record-breaking cold this winter. The night of December 27 was the coldest night in 28 years at -7.6 Celsius. (epa-EFE/Farooq Khan)
10
A Soyuz spacecraft carrying the Canopus satellite blasts off from the launchpad at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia on December 27. (Roskosmos via Reuters)
11
The Uzbek capital, Tashkent, witnessed a parade of Santa Clauses in an event organized by the Defense Ministry. More than 500 volunteers will be acting as Santa Clauses in New Year events in various schools around Tashkent.
12
An Afghan laborer prepares brown sugar from sugarcane juice at a traditional factory in the Kama District of Nangarhar Province, east of Jalalabad. (AFP/Noorullah Shirzada)
13
A bird picks corn kernels from a bird feeder on a tree branch in the village of Khatenchitsy, 65 kilometers northwest of Minsk. (AP/Sergei Grits)
14
Krasnoyarsk's Paraskeva Pyatnitsa Chapel on a foggy, frosty day in Siberia (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin)
15
Bathers participate in the annual Christmas winter-swimming competition on the Vltava River in Prague on December 26. (Reuters/David W. Cerny)
16
A swan flaps its wings in an icy pond at the Kugulu Park public garden in Ankara, Turkey, on December 26. (AP/Burhan Ozbilici)
17
A passenger looks out of a bus window as frost hits Novosibirsk with temperatures dropping as low as -31 degrees centigrade on December 24. (TASS/Kirill Kuchmar)
18
The rising full moon is seen behind Christmas lights in Skopje, Macedonia, on December 25. (Reuters/Ognen Teofilovski)
19
Swiss guards parade before the arrival of the Pope on Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican for the traditional Urbi et Orbi Christmas message to the city and the world on December 25. (Tiziana Fabi/AFP)
20
Nuns look out from behind a door as Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the acting Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, makes his way to the West Bank town of Bethlehem from Jerusalem's Old City on December 24. (Reuters/Ronen Zvulun)
21
A man walks over a bridge through dense fog and smog in the Macedonian capital, Skopje. (AFP/Robert Atanasovski)
22
People dressed as Father Frost and the Snow Maiden take part in a seasonal procession in the center of Minsk, Belarus. (Reuters/Vasily Fedosonko)
23
Bangkok authorities wash dust off streets after a week of hazardous pollution levels in the Thai capital. (Reuters/Soe Zeya Tun)
24
A plume of ash rises as the Anak Krakatau volcano erupts in Indonesia, causing a deadly tsunami that killed hundreds. (Reuters/Susi Air)
25
Dancers perform in a scene from the Mikhailovsky Theater's production of the Nutcracker ballet staged by Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato in St. Petersburg, Russia. (TASS/Grigory Dukor)