The population in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk reached one million on Tuesday, city officials said.
The one-millionth resident is a newborn baby girl, city hall said in a statement, adding that the one-million mark was reached at 7:40 p.m. local time (15:40 Moscow time).
Acting Mayor Edkham Akbulatov plans to present a gift on behalf of the city to the baby's mother on Wednesday.
A number of city bodies monitor Krasnoyarsk's estimated population: the Federal Migration Service, Krasnoyarskstat, the city healthcare system and registry offices. They all forecast that the one-millionth resident would be born on April 9-10.
Krasnoyarskstat reported in late March that the city's population - 975,000 according to the 2010 federal census - had increased by 23,000 people as of the beginning of 2012, 87.6 percent due to net migration and 12.4 percent due to natural increase.
In late February, the governor of Krasnoyarsk Territory, Lev Kuznetsov met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and said that Krasnoyarsk “is working” hard to become a so-called million-city and expected to reach that mark this year.
Russia had 12 cities with a population over one million as of January 1, 2011: Moscow (11.541 million), St. Petersburg (4.899 million), Novosibirsk (1.475 million), Yekaterinburg (1.353 million), Nizhny Novgorod (1.252 million), Samara (1.166 million), Omsk (1.154 million), Kazan (1.145 million), Chelyabinsk (1.131 million), Rostov-on-Don (1.091 million), Ufa (1.066 million) and Volgograd (1.021 million).
