Nina Merzlikina, 75, and Sergei Kostenko, 45, have packed up their belongings at this apartment in Vorkuta, waiting to be evicted. Local officials want to close the village on the city outskirts, so they can shut off supplies of gas and electricity.
Vorkuta is a coal mining and former Gulag town 1,200 miles north east of Moscow, beyond the Arctic Circle, where temperatures in winter drop to -50C.
Here, whole villages are being slowly deserted and reclaimed by snow, while the financial crisis is squeezing coal mining companies that already struggle to find workers.