The most expensive place to live in Russia is the far-eastern town of Anadyr, one of the country’s most isolated settlements, Russia’s statistics agency Rosstat revealed in its annual report on Tuesday.
Anadyr, which serves as the capital of Chukotka, sits inside the Arctic Circle, and acts as an important port on the Bering Strait, the passage of water that separates Russia from the American state of Alaska by just 83 kilometers. Due to its isolation and lack of road transport to other cities, travel to the city is mainly via the airport. A direct flight to Moscow takes over eight hours.
According to Rosstat, based on a set of 264 types of consumer goods and services, Anadyr is 57% more expensive than the national average. Behind Russia’s easternmost town come settlements in Kamchatka Krai and Yakutia, two regions also in the country’s Far East.
Neither Moscow nor St. Petersburg, the two most populated cities in Russia, came inside the top 10.
The measurement was designed to enable the government to assess the cost of living in certain cities when compared to Russia as a whole. Because of that, it does not take income into account, merely focusing on the price of goods and services. In line with its high cost of living, Chukotka also has a much greater average wage, at 2.2 times the national average.
The stats revealed that the lowest prices for goods and services are found in Nazran, the largest city in Ingushetia, a republic in the North Caucasus. Ingushetia is also the region with the highest unemployment in the country (31.6%), far ahead of the national average of 5.9%.
Earlier this year, specialists from Moscow’s Financial University named the country’s capital as the best Russian city for quality of life ahead of St. Petersburg, Grozny, Magnitogorsk, and Vladimir. As well as cost of living, the experts also considered the average income, as well as social issues, quality of public utilities, and level of education.