Siberia has a reputation for extreme cold, but for the inhabitants of Yakutsk, the remote capital of Yakutia in Russia's far eastern Sakha Republic, temperatures of -40 Centigrade are a breeze. Cold even by Siberian standards, its rich resources of diamonds and gold bring with it the reward of higher salaries and a standard of living hard to equal outside Moscow. The vast Yakutiya-Sakha republic is about nine times the land area of Germany, with a population of 1 million. The village of Oymyakon recorded the lowest-ever temperature in a permanently inhabited place: a bone-numbing -71.2 Centigrade. Photographs by Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
