A hole 525 metres deep and 1,200 metres across, cut into the permafrost of the Sakha Republic, and the fourth deepest excavated pit on Earth. Through the 1960s it produced ten million carats of diamond a year, about a fifth of it gem quality, from one of the richest kimberlite pipes ever found. A 342.57 carat stone came out in 1980 and a 468 carat stone in 2025, both among the largest Russia has produced. Open-pit work ran 44 years and stopped in June 2001, everything stopped in 2004, and it was recommissioned in 2009 to be worked underground instead. You do not go in. It is here because the scale of it is hard to believe until you see it from above: the town of Mirny sits on the rim.
Diamond
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