But for the village of Krasnoye, the only settlement in the Nenets region connected by road to the region’s capital, the herding tradition lives on.

Each winter, herders in Russia's sparsely populated Nenets Autonomous District corral their reindeer into open-air pens before selecting weak animals to be culled.

Energy companies spend “billions of rubles” developing far-flung areas and supporting Nenets culture, Litovskikh said.