Frozen to death on way to meet boyfriend, or foul play? 

The young woman never reached her boyfriend's flat in Kainskaya Zaimka, close to Novosibirsk's scientific and university satellite Akademgorodok.

Instead she asked the taxi to stop some way from his home, and then walked in unusually cold November temperatures of around minus 34C - but in the opposite direction.

Unusually, she had not texted her boyfriend Dmitry Eltsov, 24, to say she was on her way. Next day her bag with money and her documents was found at a nearby bus stop. 

Her body was found by workers of an animal farm belonging to the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, part of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

She was lying in the snow, about one kilometre from where she left the taxi. The Invesgitative Committee say there was no evidence of violent marks on her body. 

Did she get lost or confused in the deep cold? Or was she trying to escape someone? She walked some 500 metres from the bus stop. 

She evidently tried to enter the farm's premises and knocked at the door. But no-one was there.

The taxi driver said she had been a little 'drunk' but was determined that she didn't want to be dropped at her boyfriend's block. 

Dmitry said:  'The version of taxi driver is that she did not give him an exact address, he brought her to the settlement and dropped her there. 

'We had been dating for a year and every time she asked the taxi drivers to drop her right at the entrance of my house, she never asked to drop her so far away. Also it is very strange that her bag was thrown away.'