2015: Pictures of the Year

Ukraininan President Petro Poroshenko (L) looks back, followed by Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) after a meeting in Minsk, Feb. 11, 2015.

MiG-29 and Su-25 military jets fly in formation above Red Square during the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia, May 9, 2015.

A member of Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations operates a boat with two men onboard on a flooded street in Sochi, Russia, June 26, 2015.

Soldiers react as they walk past coffins of troops killed after the collapse of a section of a barracks during a funeral ceremony in Omsk, Russia, July 14, 2015.

Authorities in several regions have got to work on what they said were illegal imports, determined to press on with destroying illegal imports they consider "a security threat."? 




Moscow banned many Western food imports last year in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the United States, European Union and other of their allies during the confrontation over Ukraine.? 





The ban, currently in place until Aug. 5, 2016, covers a wide range of imports including pork, beef, poultry, fish and seafood, milk and dairy products, fruits, vegetables and nuts. It applies to food from the United States, EU, Canada, Australia and Norway.

A tank's barrel is seen while driven through the course of the Tank Biathlon competition during the International Army Games-2015 in Alabino, outside Moscow, Russia, Aug. 4, 2015.

Russian President Vladimir Putin exercises in a gym at the Bocharov Ruchei state residence in Sochi, Russia, Aug. 30, 2015.

Muslims attend an Eid al-Adha (Kurban Bairam) mass prayer in Moscow, Russia, Sept. 24, 2015.

U.S. President Barack Obama extends his hand to Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Sept. 28, 2015.

A woman lays flowers on a makeshift memorial for victims of a Russian airliner which crashed in Egypt, outside Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg, Russia, Nov. 1, 2015.

Artist Pyotr Pavlensky holds a petrol can during a protest action titled ''Threat'' in front of the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters in central Moscow, Nov. 9, 2015.

A customer visits a grocery lit with candles due to a power cut, in Simferopol, Crimea, Nov. 22, 2015.

Members of an honor guard stand at attention next to the coffin holding the body of Oleg Peshkov, a Russian pilot of the downed SU-24 jet, during a funeral ceremony at a cemetary in Lipetsk, Russia, Dec. 2, 2015.

Photographers take pictures as the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft carrying the crew of Timothy Peake of Britain, Yuri Malenchenko of Russia and Timothy Kopra of the U.S. as it blasts off to the International Space Station (ISS) from the launchpad at the Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Dec. 15, 2015.

Russian soldiers with their plane, a Sukhoi Su-34 strike fighter, which NATO calls a Fullback, this month in Latakia, Syria.