Alec Luhn is a Moscow-based journalist who has written for the Guardian, Politico, Slate, The Nation, the Independent, Vice News, and other publications.
Steam rises off the freezing water as a Chinese man rows his boat along the Yalu River between China and North Korea some 70 kms north of the North Korean border town of Siniuju which lies across the river from Dandong in northeast China's Liaoning province on November 26, 2010. AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. BROWN (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)
Russia's President Vladimir Putin caresses a Persian leopard cub as he visits the Persian leopard breeding and rehabilitation centre in the National Park in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, on February 4, 2014. A leopard was announced in 2011 to be one of the official mascots of the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Perhaps the most important vote in Russia's public selection of a new Olympic mascot was cast when Vladimir Putin said he wanted a funky leopard to represent the 2014 Sochi Winter Games. AFP PHOTO/ RIA-NOVOSTI/ POOL / ALEXEI NIKOLSKY (Photo credit should read ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/AFP/Getty Images)
Ukrainian deputy Prime Minister Gennadiy Zubko gives a press conference to present the results of the criminal investigation of the MH17 crash in Kiev on October 13, 2015. The The Dutch-led probe concluded that the Malaysia Airlines flight, headed from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down by a Russian-made BUK missile fired from war-torn eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities should have closed the air space over the eastern region wracked by fighting with pro-Russian separatists, the official inquiry into the MH17 air disaster found today. AFP PHOTO/GENYA SAVILOV (Photo credit should read GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images)
