MOSCOW. Feb 9 (Interfax-AVN) - Lieutenant General Yuri Kovalev has been appointed Russia's deputy minister of emergency situations, Colonel Viktor Beltsov, deputy head of the ministry's information and PR department, said on Monday.
"Yuri Kovalev replaced Alexander Moskalets, who was elected to the State Duma on the United Russia party list," Beltsov told Interfax-Military News Agency.
Kovalev was born in the town of Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz) in Russia's internal republic of North Ossetia in 1955. He graduated from the Ordzhonikidze Joint Arms Command College in 1977 and the Frunze Military Academy in 1990.
Kovalev served in motorized rifle units of the Trans-Baikal, Baltic, Belarussian and Leningrad military districts. He joined the Russian Emergencies Ministry in 1993. He was the commander of a detached rescue brigade in the ministry's Central Regional Center, then he was promoted to deputy head and later to head of the center. He personally supervised rescue work on the scene of the apartment house blast in Moscow in 1999, work to cope with flood consequences in the Ryazan and Moscow regions in 2000, and fighting forest and peat-bog fires in the Moscow, Ryazan, Kaluga and Vladimir regions in 2002.