From eagle hunters in Kazakhstan to a peaceful revolution in Armenia, these are some of the most striking images of the year from RFE/RL's photographers.
The Year's Best From RFE/RL's Photographers
- By Kateryna Oliynyk and
- Lucie Steinzova
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A musician plays the violin at a traditional Belarusian wedding in Minsk on August 12. (Uladz Hrydzin, RFE/RL)
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Azerbaijani Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, in Baku on August 22. Sheep and other animals are slaughtered as a symbolic offering to God. (RFE/RL)
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A soldier in Zaslaue, in the Minsk region of Belarus, during a city celebration on August 26. (RFE/RL)
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Sheep belonging to Kuchi nomads in Afghanistan's Uruzgan Province on August 26. (RFE/RL)
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A bride belonging to Kazakhstan's Dungan minority wears hand-embroidered clothing before her wedding in the village of Sortobe on August 27. For more photos of Dungan traditions, visit our photo gallery. (Petr Trotsenko, RFE/RL)
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Riders fight in a mock battle on horseback on the opening day of the World Nomad Games in Kyrgyzstan on September 4. (Amos Chapple, RFE/RL)
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A policeman bleeds after a clash with war veterans during a protest in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, on September 5. Several hundred veterans of the country's 1992-95 war were protesting for greater benefits and a unified register of all demobilized fighters. (Midhat Poturovic, RFE/RL)
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Remains of a railway, known as Stalin's Dead Road, in the Russian taiga between Salekhard and Nadym, September 23. For more on one of the Soviet Union’s tragic gulag projects, see our photo feature. (Amos Chapple, RFE/RL)
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A visitor mourns at the Monument of Heroes in Tbilisi, Georgia, on September 27. The monument honors Georgians killed in the conflict in Abkhazia in 1992-1993. (Mzia Saganelidze, RFE/RL)
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A look inside the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on November 1. For more photos from the site of the nuclear disaster, see our photo gallery, Under The Shield: Inside Chernobyl's New Safe Confinement. (Andriy Dubchak, RFE/RL)
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Fog partly conceals the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 6. The 102-meter-tall statue belongs to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. (RFE/RL)
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A man carries a portrait of Vladimir Lenin during a celebration of October Revolution Day in Minsk, Belarus, on November 7. (Uladz Hrydzin, RFE/RL)
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A Ukrainian soldier in a front line position in the village of Zholobok in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region on November 7. (Serhii Nuzhnenko, RFE/RL)
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Georgian Orthodox believers commemorate saints known as the Hundred Thousand Martyrs in the capital, Tbilisi, on November 14. (Mzia Saganelidze, RFE/RL)
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A car with Russian diplomatic license plates burns in Kyiv, Ukraine, on November 25. Angry protesters fired flares outside the Russian Embassy after Russian forces seized three Ukrainian vessels and detained 24 Ukrainian sailors in the Kerch Strait. (Serhii Nuzhnenko, RFE/RL)
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A man walks in front of the 800-year-old Great Mosque in Herat, Afghanistan, on December 10. (RFE/RL)
