Startling new statistics show that some 23 villages in vast Krasnoyarsk region are populated only by men.
The villages are tiny, and some of the most remote in the world. Several have only one resident, and others no more than four or five men. Picture: Sergey Dolya, from an expedition to Siberia
The villages are tiny, and some of the most remote in the world. Several have only one resident, and others no more than four or five men.
'One thing you can say about our men is that they are real men,' said a spokeswoman. 'The winters are fiercely cold, the summer's hot, and the men are more like the summers than the winters.'
The sex imbalance was revealed on the day that annually honours the role of men - Fatherland Defender's Day, marked in Russia on February 23.
In fact Krasnoyarsk region - the second largest in Russia after the Sakha Republic - has 193,000 more women than men across its entire area.
Reports say some of the male-only villages are in Emelyanovsky district, an area of 7,400 square kilometres fairly close to the regional capital of Krasnoyarsk, one of Siberia's liveliest cities.
Others are far more remote in a region that would be the world's 12 largest country if it was an independent state.
The villages of Kasovo, Novy Lokatui and Lokatui all have just one male resident each, say official statistics. And Ilinka has three men only.
The reason they are male only is not clear from the demographic data, but the survey produces other intriguing insights. For example, across the region there are eight single fathers taking care of five or more children.
And the mean age of men is around 35, while for women it is 40 - five years older. The region has 77 people older than 100, only one-third of them men. But of the four aged 107, three are men. In the last year, some 530 men older than 60 got married, as did 16 teenagers under under 18.
Archeologists discovered a new stone bracelet, two sharp pins, a marble ring and fox tooth pendants.
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