Yuri Ponomarev

Ponomarev was born in 1946 in Petrozavodsk in what was then the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic. He graduated from the Petrozavodsk Forestry Technical School and worked successively in the Timber Industrial Park and Onega Tractor Factory in Loushi District. During this period, he studied at Petrozavodsk State University evening school for one year. In 1971, he graduated from the Moscow Automotive Machinery Institute with a degree in mechanical engineering, and later served as deputy director of the Onega Tractor Plant and secretary of the Youth League Committee.

Ponomarev graduated from the Leningrad Senior Party School of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1979, and served as the second secretary of the Petrozavodsk October District Committee, the counselor of the Soviet Embassy in Afghanistan, and the first secretary of the Petrozavodsk Lenin District Committee.

Ponomarev graduated from the Department of Economics of Petrozavodsk State University in 1995 and served as the General Manager of Pitkyaranta Paper Company.

Ponomarev served as a member of the Federal Assembly of Russia from December 28, 2001 to January 1, 2003. From 2003 to 2004, he served as Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Karelia. In his later years, he served as chairman of the Karelian Entrepreneurs Association.

Pomomarev died on October 29, 2020 at a hospital in Petrozavodsk from COVID-19, aged 74.[1]