MISS WORLD 2008 -WELCOME BACK TO RUSSIA

MOSCOW, December 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's newly crowned Miss World, Ksenia Sukhinova, arrived in Moscow on Wednesday and will soon return to her home city and outpourings of congratulations from her family and friends.

The 21-year-old student from Tyumen in Siberia, who was the winner of the Miss Russia 2007 contest, said she was glad for Russia and happy to show the whole world that Russian girls were the "most beautiful."

"And now I want to go home and want to see snow," Sukhinova told reporters at Moscow's Domodedovo.

In Tyumen, a center of Russia's oil and gas industry located 2,000 kilometers from Moscow, temperatures have soared to minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit), while in South Africa, where the 2008 Miss World pageant was held, the temperature is a balmy 24 degrees Celsius (75 degrees Fahrenheit).

Answering a question on her private life, Sukhinova, who also won the contest's top model award and took the third place in the swimsuit competition, confessed that her heart was "still free."

Despite the cold, Sukhinova can expect a warm welcome at the Oil and Gas University in Tyumen, where she is a fifth-year student studying cybernetic systems.

"We are very glad she won," the head of the university's cybernetic systems department, Oleg Kuzyakov, said on Monday. "Her group and the whole university will congratulate Ksenia when she is in Tyumen."

The only previous Russian winner of the international beauty festival was Yulia Kurochkina in 1992.