A city once home to 115,000 people now has fewer than half that number. A furnished three-room apartment, including appliances, can be sold for less than 1,000 euros. These two realities illustrate the situation of a place that Russia seems to have largely forgotten, located far beyond the Arctic Circle. Founded in 1932 by prisoners of the gulag, a system of forced labor camps in the Soviet Union, Vorkouta was built to extract coal that the USSR urgently needed. Today, the population has dropped to approximately 50,000-57,000, largely due to the closure of coal mines. Although apartments in the region can be bought for as little as 1,000 euros, heating and electricity bills can reach several hundred euros per month. Around 15,500 apartments remain empty, as it is often more cost-effective for owners to abandon their properties than to keep paying the yearly costs, which amount to 7.4 million dollars annually, paid by the Russian state. Vorkouta was established in 1932 by prisoners of the gulag, who were sent to the remote Arctic to extract coal. Today, the city is isolated, with no road connections to the rest of the country—travel is possible only by train or plane, often delayed by severe storms that sweep the tundra for months. This isolation, once a disadvantage, became a kind of Soviet eldorado in the past, as the coal mines drove the local economy. Workers from across the USSR were attracted by the wages, and the city developed around its mining operations, which included thirteen mines and a dozen related locations. However, a system built around a single resource is inherently fragile. When coal became unprofitable, the city had no alternative to fall back on. In 1989, Vorkouta had 115,000 residents, a number that had briefly risen to over 200,000 when including surrounding mining communities. Today, official estimates suggest around 50,000 to 57,000 people live there, though some local officials believe the actual number is as low as 25,000 to 35,000. The population decline was not gradual but marked by waves of mass departures as the mines closed. At the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, thirteen mines were active, but only four remain today, along with a single coal pit. Less than half of the mines are still operational, and the resulting unemployment has driven entire families to leave the region. Entire neighborhoods, such as Yourchor, Promychlenniy, and Sovetskiy, are now ghost towns, with broken windows and empty streets. Furnished three-room apartments, equipped with appliances, can be bought for 100,000 to 150,000 roubles (about 1,000 to 1,500 euros)—a price that might seem attractive to buyers used to higher costs in cities like Paris. However, owning property in Vorkouta comes with high ongoing costs. Heating, water, and electricity are expensive in a region where winter temperatures often drop well below zero for months. These bills can reach several hundred euros per month, a financial burden that is hard to manage in a region where jobs are becoming increasingly scarce as the mines close. Sometimes, it is more profitable to give up a property than to wait for a buyer who may never come. As long as a property owner is registered on the title, they remain responsible for the costs, even if they have left the city. This has led to the abandonment of around 15,500 apartments in Vorkouta and nearby areas, with a third still connected to the central heating system. In some buildings, residents use chalk to mark the floors where heating is still active, creating an improvised guide for the few remaining inhabitants. Out of about 5,000 unoccupied municipal apartments, more than 4,000 are in the surrounding villages, many of which are now completely abandoned. In the long run, only Vorgachor and Severny, the two most populated localities in the area, may continue to exist, as a few residents refuse to leave despite the lack of economic opportunities. Vorkouta is not an isolated case; it reflects the fate of many Russian single-industry cities, built around a single resource and unable to adapt once that resource is no longer profitable. The cracked buildings and empty streets tell the story of a country where entire regions are slowly being abandoned, affected by cold, remoteness, and economic neglect.