Photos of the Week, Feb. 6-10

Will they soon switch places? A wax figure of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rides behind one of President Dmitry Medvedev on a horse at a St. Petersburg museum. The two say they will swap jobs after the March 4 election.

An employee at a weaving plant checking a tapestry featuring Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's face on Monday. The Uzor factory north of St. Petersburg weaves a multitude of images such as landscapes and famous figures.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday touring a plant in Tikhvin that produces railroad cars.

Actors dressed as hamsters holding signs bearing opposition slogans pose Thursday with a live bear for a pro-Putin videoshoot in Moscow. Authorities scoff at the opposition as “network hamsters” who spend all their time blogging, but activists have embraced it as a term of endearment.

A polar bear sleeping it off at the Moscow Zoo as a group of crows peck at the hulking beast's leftover table scraps. Recent frigid temperatures have likely been perfectly comfortable for the Arctic creature.

A man rolling in the snow before plunging into an ice hole Thursday at Lisi Lake in Tbilisi, Georgia. Temperatures there clocked in at minus 6 degrees Celsius — balmy when compared to the minus 19 C registered in Moscow.

Moscow's pigeons, driven in by the freezing cold, gathering to peck and flap near metro Kitai-Gorod on Thursday.

Construction workers pasting an ad on Tverskaya Ulitsa on Tuesday, the man in the center going the extra mile to ensure a smooth finish.