Earlier this week, the photographer Maria Passer visited some of the ice-covered abandoned buildings of Vorkuta, a dwindling coal-mining city north of the Arctic Circle, in Russia’s Komi Republic. Temperatures in Vorkuta can drop as low as -58 degrees Fahrenheit in the coldest winter months. Fewer than half of the city’s once-active coal mines still operate today, and the ongoing unemployment crisis has driven residents to leave by the thousands, abandoning huge Soviet-era housing blocks to the elements. Every winter, the snow and ice move in, encrusting what used to be people’s living rooms, offices, and bedrooms.
An Ice-Covered Russian Ghost Town
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An interior view of an ice-covered bathroom in an abandoned building in the Sementnozavodsky region, 19 kilometers from the coal-mining town of Vorkuta, photographed on March 1, 2021. #
Maria Passer / Anadolu Agency / Getty
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