Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin died early on Wednesday morning at the age of 72.
Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin was born in the Siberian village of Cherny Ostrog on April 9, 1938.
He graduated from the Kuybyshev Industrial Institute in 1966 and started to build his career in the Communist Party.
In 1982, he was appointed deputy minister of the natural gas industries of the Soviet Union.
During 1985-1989 he served as the minister of gas industries.
In 1989, when the government company Gazprom was created out of the Oil and Gas Ministry, Chernomyrdin was elected its chairman.
In May 1992, then-President Boris Yeltsin appointed Chernomyrdin deputy prime minister in charge of fuel and energy.
On 14 December 1992, Chernomyrdin was confirmed as prime minister of the Russian Federation.
Chernomyrdin was acting president of the Russian Federation for 23 hours on 6 November 1996, while Boris Yeltsin underwent a heart operation. Chernomyrdin remained prime minister until his dismissal in March 1998.
Following the August 1998 Russian financial crisis, Yeltsin reappointed Chernomyrdin as prime minister, but the State Duma refused to confirm his appointment.
In May 2001, Yeltsin's successor Vladimir Putin appointed Chernomyrdin as Russia's ambassador to Ukraine. The move was widely considered by Russian media as an attempt to distance Chernomyrdin from the center of Russian politics.
In February 2009, Chernomyrdin strained relations between Ukraine and Russia when he in an interview said that "it is impossible to come to an agreement on anything with the Ukrainian leadership. If different people come in, we'll see." The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a response it could declare Chernomyrdin "persona non grata" over the row.
On June 11, 2009, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev relieved Chernomyrdin of his duties as Russian Ambassador in Kiev, and appointed him presidential adviser and special presidential representative on economic cooperation with CIS member countries.
MOSCOW, November 3 (RIA Novosti)
