Senior Russian Minister Yevgeny Zinichev, Dies During Drill
MOSCOW — A senior government official died on Wednesday when
he dove off a cliff trying to save a prominent film director who had fallen
into the water during a drill in Russia’s Far North, officials confirmed.
Yevgeny N. Zinichev, the minister of emergency situations,
“was tragically killed while on duty, while taking part in interagency
exercises designed to protect the Arctic zone from emergencies, as he tried to
save a person’s life,” a statement from his ministry said.
Mr. Zinichev, who was visiting the region of Norilsk as part
of a multicity drill involving 6,000 people, dived into the water after
Aleksandr Melnik, the director, slipped and fell off a wet rock, the ministry’s
press service told local reporters.
The Russian-state news agency, TASS, reported that Mr.
Melnik, who was scouting locations for a documentary, also died. The men had
been standing on the edge of the Kitabo Oron waterfall, part of the picturesque
Putorana State Nature Reserve in northern Siberia, about 100 miles west of
Norilsk.
“He did not hesitate for a second, not as a minister, but as
a rescuer, having committed a heroic act,” Russia’s deputy emergency minister
Andrei Gurovich said of Mr. Zinichev to the Russia 24 TV channel.
“He lived like that all his life.”
As minister of emergencies, Mr. Zinichev was responsible for
managing the country’s response to natural and man-made disasters, including
the forest fires raging in Siberia.
The position is considered influential in Russia. Its
previous holder, Sergei K. Shoigu, a
confidant of President Vladimir V. Putin, oversaw the ministry for two decades before
becoming defense minister in 2012.
Mr. Zinichev, who was 55, began working for the Russian
security services, then known as the K.G.B., in 1987. After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, he continued to work for the domestic intelligence agency, which
was renamed the F.S.B. He became a
member of Mr. Putin’s security detail in 2006.
In 2014, he became deputy head of the F.S.B.’s
counterterrorism service, rising in 2016 to deputy head of the entire
agency. He was appointed emergency
minister in May 2018, and also served on Russia’s Security Council.
Mr. Zinichev’s is the first death of a sitting minister in
Russia, according to the BBC, which also reported that the exercises had been
ordered by Mr. Putin to prepare for crisis situations in the Arctic.
The Russian president expressed his condolences from the
Siberian taiga, where he was spending a few days with Mr. Shoigu, according to
his spokesman Dmitri Peskov.
Mr. Melnik was a director and screenwriter. He is best known
for “Terra Nova,” a 2008 movie about a group of prisoners taken to an island. “Territory,”
released in 2015, based on an Arctic adventure novel inspired by real events,
tells the story of the discovery of gold reserves in northeastern Russia. Parts
of the film were shot in the Putorana
reserve where he died. Mr. Melnik had been taking part in the drills as
part of his search for locations for a planned documentary on the development
of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route.
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