Russian Emergency Situations Minister Yevgeny Zinichev has died, according to the statement released Tuesday. The official died while carrying out his service duties in the Arctic. The brave Russian died while trying to save someone’s life.
The 55-year-old Zinichev died in Norilsk, a city located in the Arctic belt. The Emergency Situations Ministry (ESM) of the Russian Federation has confirmed the saddest news but gave no further details.
“The Emergency Situations Ministry of the Russian Federation informs with sorrow that while carrying out his service duties, during interdepartmental exercises on defending the Arctic zone from extraordinary situations, and while attempting to rescue a person, the chief of the Emergency Situations Ministry, Yevgeny Zinichev, has tragically died,” the official a statement reads.
According to a tweet of the RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan, the minister died after he fell off a cliff while trying to grab a TV cameraman who himself had just slipped. The cameraman is also dead, the eyewitnesses confirmed.
During his last trip to the Arctic, Yevgeny Zinichev planned to oversee the large-scale drills and to visit the construction site of a new fire station in Norilsk, as well as a search and rescue team in the area.
Prior to becoming head of the Emergency Situations Ministry in October 2018, Zinichev was adeputy director of the Federal Security Service, part of President Vladimir Putin’s personal security detail, and briefly as acting regional governor of Kaliningrad for two months in 2016, TASS reported.
