Viktor Chernomyrdin died

The former head of the Russian government, the former Russian ambassador to Kyiv, Viktor Chernomyrdin, has passed away. As Interfax reports from the words of people close to him, he has been very ill recently. At the same time, there is conflicting information about where Chernomyrdin died. Relatives told the agency that this happened at home, but a source in his secretariat claims that Chernomyrdin died in a foreign clinic and was just supposed to return to Moscow. The former prime minister was 72 years old.

Chernomyrdin headed the Russian government for many years. In 1992, he was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation. In 1993, his position became known as “chairman of the government.” Before taking this post, Chernomyrdin was deputy minister of the gas industry in Soviet times, then minister. From 1989 to 1992, he headed the board of Gazprom. On May 30, 1992, he was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for the Fuel and Energy Complex.

As prime minister, in 1995 Chernomyrdin headed the “Our Home is Russia” party. The party sat in the Duma from 1995 to 1999, but received only 1.19% of the votes in the next parliamentary elections. By this time, Chernomyrdin was no longer the head of government - President Boris Yeltsin relieved him of this post on March 26, 1998. During the economic and governmental crisis in August-September of the same year, he was acting prime minister, but the Duma rejected his candidacy twice, after which the government was headed by Yevgeny Primakov.

In April 1999, after the start of the bombing of Yugoslavia, Chernomyrdin was appointed special representative of the Russian President for resolving the conflict in the Balkans. In August 1999, he was elected chairman of the board of directors of Gazprom. In September 2000, he became co-chairman of the board of trustees of the Russian-American Business Cooperation Council.

Chernomyrdin served as ambassador to Ukraine from 2001 to 2009. At the same time, he was the special representative of the president for the development of Russian-Ukrainian trade and economic relations. His last position, occupied on June 11, 2009, was called “adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, special representative of the head of state on economic cooperation with CIS member states.”

One of Chernomyrdin’s most famous and unexpected actions was telephone conversations with the leader of Chechen militants Shamil Basayev in June 1995 during the seizure of a hospital in Budennovsk. As a result of negotiations, most of the hostages were released.