“Elektron” captain and communist Yarantsev new Head of Teriberka
Former captain of the trawler ”Elektron” and Communist Party member Valery Yarantsev won yesterday’s second voting round in Teriberka, the small village on the Barents Sea coast that is planned to house the Shtokman project LNG plant.
Yarantsev is a member of the Communist Party, but stood for election as an independent candidate. He received 60,71 percent of the votes, while Yekaterina Matrekhina from United Russia got 37,61 percent, B-port.com reports.
Leader of the regional branch of United Russia Yevgeny Nikora calls the election results a failure and a serious lesson for the party.
In a comment to the elections results, Murmansk Oblast Governor Yury Yevdokimov says that United Russia’s mistake was to position a woman a candidate. Teriberka is a coastal village with sailors and fishermen, and a woman is not what they need right now, but a strong man, Yevdokimov says:
- It is the same in every village: when times are bad, so is the atmosphere. They need someone strong, with a fist and extreme willpower.
As captain of the trawler “Elektron”, Valery Yarantsev was involved in one of the most dramatic events in the history of the Norwegian Coast Guard. In October 2005 a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel caught the trawler in illegal fishing in a protected part of the Barents Sea. The captain refused to be subjected to arrest and took two Norwegian fisheries inspectors hostage and headed for Russian Economic Zone.
Yarantsev was charged for kidnapping and illegal fishing by the Russian State Prosecutor in April 2006. One year later the Murmansk court acquitted him of the charges on kidnapping, but gave him a 100.000 RUB fine for illegal fishing.
The village of Teriberka is the site chosen for the Shtokman gas processing facilities. It has about 1400 inhabitants and is located on the coast of the Barents Sea about 100 km north-east of the city of Murmansk.
