Russian railway worker Andrey Bugera had a singular goal: get to pension age so he can leave the polluted, frigid coal mining town above the Arctic Circle where he works and move south to live out even a brief bit of retirement in comfort.
But now that President Vladimir Putin has said he plans to raise the retirement age by five years, Bugera fears this will never happen.
In his city of Vorkuta, a place so isolated it cannot be reached by road, temperatures dip below minus 40 degrees Celsius in the winter and clouds of coal dust can turn the white snow black.