In August 2018 Nadvoyitsky Aluminium Plant (NAP) in Karelia region of Russia was closed when US and EU governments imposed sanctions on pro-Putin tycoon Oleg Deripaska and his RUSAL ("RUSsian ALuminium") holding. Today the large premises of the plant stand empty and a great amount of connected electric power remains largely unused.
Russian Mining Company (based in Russia, obviously -- and not so obviously, backed by a so-called "internet ombudsman" Dmitri Marinichev, a notorious figure with ties to the government) plans to host its crypto-mining hardware on NAP premises and to use its cheap electric power. With this large mining hub, the company aims to get 20% of the total BTC hashrate.
Russian Mining Company already has enough experience in the matter -- in 2017 they made an ICO and hosted a mining hub at the auto plant "Moskvich" in Moscow. The hub is said to mine 1815 bitcoins before it was closed after the BTC price dump.
Also, the company is said to make an agreement with the UK-based crypto-exchange Cryptonex, which is believed to be of Russian origin too.
Besides BTC mining, the company plans to use its new project for other compute-intensive applications, such as AI and rendering, and to host third-party mining hardware.
