I dug into the area the plane was:
Yakutsk, Russia
https://www.bootsnall.com/articles/a-city-of-gold-and-diamonds-yakutsk-russia.html
Siberia is a living museum, a testament to more prosperous times. Buildings crumble where they stand. Roads wind through villages long deserted. Everything is a relic.
Not in Yakutsk. Yakutsk is the capital city of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), a region unimaginably wealthy in diamonds, gold, oil and gas. Sakha is the worlds second largest producer and exporter of diamonds, and around 30 tons of gold are mined within its borders yearly. The areas vast mineral wealth got to the head of Mikhail Nikolaev, Sakhas former president, who made noises about seceding from the Russian Federation. Yakutsk, with its population of slightly over 200,000, would be too tiny to make it on to a map of China, Russias southern neighbor. In north-eastern Siberia at 61.5° N, it is a megalopolis, and a wealthy one.
Signs of Sakhas wealth abound. Brand-new, modern buildings such as the Polar Star Hotel are sprouting up around the city. Many, like Polar Star, are financed by Alrosa, the regions diamond interest. The sheer number of hotels 11 speaks to Yakutsks status as a regional center. In contrast, Birobidzhan, the 90,000-person capital of the nearby Jewish Autonomous Republic, is home to a single, lone hotel, which certainly does not match the money look of the Polar Star.
Many hotels offer armoured rooms. One, Sails Hotel on the main town square, appears to offer very little else. This leads to much speculation as to what sorts of guests patronize these establishments. In the Tigin-Darkhan Hotel restaurant, Dmitry Yakimov, a police detective specializing in combating the mafia, notes that one must be careful in restaurants. Not everyone here got their money by working for it. Still, Yakimov notes that the mafia poses no real danger to tourists.
Yakutsks fifteen museums, too, speak to its status as a regional center (Birobidzhan has only one). Of these, by far the most impressive is The Treasures of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). This museum, well-guarded and accessible only to small groups of 2-4 visitors at a time, houses the republics most valuable and largest diamonds (by law, exceptionally large newly-mined diamonds belong to the state). Gold bricks and nuggets are also on display, along with many other precious and semi-precious stones, such as the radioactive charimite, found only in the Sakha Republic and the neighboring Irkutsk Oblast (charamite can be bought in many tourist shops, but this is not recommended, given the radioactivity). The heart of the exhibit, however, is award-winning and often fanciful jewelry.
(excerpt)
Great stuff! Thanks!
*texokie grabs her laptop and locates the file for this “CASH ON SKIDS” bunny hole - which turns out to be the Bingham Copper Mine hole - and stashes this new nugget from edzo4 away*