Some of the most compelling photographs from RFE/RL's coverage area for the 49th week of 2020. For more photo galleries, see our photo gallery archive.
Photos Of The Week #49
- By RFE/RL
1
A police officer detains a demonstrator during a rally in Yerevan to pressure Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian to resign over a peace deal with neighboring Azerbaijan. (AP/Hayk Baghdasaryan)
3
Soldiers from the Presidential Honor Guard wearing protective masks during a small ceremony to mark Romania's Great Union Day in Bucharest. (epa-EFE/Robert Ghement)
4
Afghan vendors sort oranges for sale at a market in the Bati Kot district in Nangarhar Province. (epa-EFE/Ghulamullah Habibi)
5
An Afghan woman carries firewood on her back in Kabul. (AP/Rahmat Gul)
6
Afghan members of the same family who lost their limbs in a land-mine blast while playing near their house pose for a photograph as the world observed International Day of Disabled Persons in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, on December 3. (epa-EFE/Ghulamullah Habibi)
7
Outside the GUM department store in Moscow (AP/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
8
A member of a local military club takes part in a ceremony marking the Day of the Unknown Soldier near a World War II monument in Stavropol, Russia. (Reuters/Eduard Korniyenko)
9
A miner just after finishing a shift at the Lonea coal mine in Petrila, Romania. (AFP/Daniel Mihailescu)
10
A shepherd leads his herd of sheep and goats on a hilltop during sunset on the outskirts of Jalalabad, Afghanistan. (AFP/Noorullah Shirzada)
11
A visually impaired man weaves a chair at the Government School and Institute for the Blind in Peshawar, Pakistan. According to reports, there are approximately 5 million people falling with some form of disability in Pakistan. The International Day of Disabled Persons, annually celebrated on December 3, was proclaimed by the UN in 1992 and aims to "promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities in all spheres of society and development." (epa-EFE/Bilawal Arbab)
12
A wounded soldier next to a bust of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's father and former president in Aghjabadi, Azerbaijan. (AP/Emrah Gurel)
13
An Afghan National Army soldier demonstrates his skills during a graduation ceremony at a military base in the Guzara district of Herat Province. (AFP/Hoshang Hashimi)
14
An electronic screen displaying pandemic prevention advice reflected on a glass wall in Moscow. (AFP/Dimitar Dilkoff)
15
Pedestrians walk near a rink past signs requesting skaters to wear protective face masks and to keep social distance as heavy fog covers Vladimir Lenin Square in the Russian city of Stavropol. (Reuters/Eduard Korniyenko)
16
A barber gives a haircut to a customer at a roadside shop on World AIDS Day in Peshawar, Pakistan, on December 1. According to doctors, cuts from razor blades that haven’t undergone proper sterilization are among some of the main causes of the spread of AIDS. (epa-EFE/Arshad Arbab)
17
A woman uses a plastic sheet as rain protection as she attends a religious service celebrating St. Andrew in the village of Ion Corvin in eastern Romania. Braving wintry weather and coronavirus fears, several hundred Orthodox Christian believers gathered outside a cave in eastern Romania where St. Andrew is said to have lived and preached in the first century. (AP/Vadim Ghirda)
18
An aerial photo taken with a drone shows winter wheat fields near Abaliget, Hungary. (epa-EFE/Tamas Soki)
19
Law enforcement officers detain two men as opposition supporters rallied to protest against police violence and the Belarus presidential election results in Minsk on November 29. Opposition protesters took to the streets of Minsk in the latest of three months of demonstrations against the reelection of longtime authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka. (AFP/Stringer)
20
Servants of the holy shrine of Imam Reza carry the coffin of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Mashhad, Iran. Fakhrizadeh's targeted killing on November 27 on the outskirts of Tehran, in what appeared to be a military-style operation, has raised concerns about a new confrontation between Iran and Israel or the United States. (Massoud Nozari/West Asia News Agency via Reuters)
21
A man shows a newborn calf in his car on a road outside the town of Lachin after six weeks of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. (AFP/Karen Minasian)
22
A person stands in the midst of his burned belongings after a fire engulfed a slum near Aziz Bhatti in Karachi, Pakistan. (epa-EFE/Shahzaib Akber)
