Two huge effigies of Russian President Vladimir Putin were torched at the UK's largest bonfire night event in the East Sussex town of Lewes.

Bonfire Night, or Fawkes Night, is marked every year in the UK on November 5, commemorating a failed 1605 plot to blow up the House of Lords.

Celebrations in Lewes bring together displays from six of the town’s seven bonfire societies and have a history of burning controversial effigies.

One of this year’s Putin effigies had him astride the Malaysia Airlines MH17 plane, another showed him sporting a Borat-style “mankind”.

A giant effigy of Russian President Vladimir Putin

In the past, the town's bonfire societies have torched guys including several popes, Angela Merkel and Osama bin Laden as part of the tongue-in-cheek celebrations.

Last year, Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, was burned, and in 2012, David Cameron and Nick Clegg went up in flames in what the organisers describe as the world’s greatest bonfire event.