The move comes amid hope of large-scale investment from Seoul into Siberia.
With dumpy little legs, a dense body and a penchant for hiding from trouble, the Manul has proved elusive to nature lovers worldwide.
Once part of the longest road in the world, tourist officials launch new initiative to get visitors to experience the pathway that linked West with East.
The man was detained in Irkutsk in December during a raid to detect foreign citizens violating immigration rules.
$50 billion has created a dream Winter Olympics resort - but Siberia also has great mountains.
Bone-cracking cold, Gulag prison camps, oil flares visible from space, and bleak industrial cities - this is a common Western stereotype of Siberia.
The Australian travel company is revolutionising the image of Siberia in the outside world.
Famous as a place of exile in Tsarist and Soviet times, it could now gets its first international class hotel.
It was in August 1917 - 95 years ago this month - that the abdicated emperor and his fearful family departed Tyumen into their Siberian exile.
Flights from east of Russian resumed for the first time since last year's earthquake and tsunami which led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.