Murmansk is a city in Russia and capital of the Murmansk Oblast. It is also an important port located on the eastern shore of Kola Bay in the Barents Sea. Its population is 314 742 inhabitants in 2008. 56th by population in the Russian Federation, it is the largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle (midnight sun, northern lights and polar night). The city lives mainly on the exploitation of gas from the Barents Sea and port (the port property, rare in Russia, to be free of ice all winter, despite its high latitude, thanks to current warm Gulf Stream). Murmansk was a strategic refueling ports the most important, during the Second World War, and the destination of many trips goods.