vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #159 / Special reports / Reading article...

The Pacific Fleet command has assigned a boat to shuttle between Russky Island and mainland Vladivostok three times a day, poviding relief for an island that has faced with food shortages and medical emergencies since public ferries stopped running.

As a crisis has grown on the island, Vladivostok Prosecutor Yury Melnikov filed a criminal case Jan. 19 against the Vladivostok Mayor’s Office, the Vladmorpass ferry company, and the Russky Island’s Medical Association on charges of negligence.

The fleet’s ferry holds 60 and leaves from pier No. 33 for Pospelova Cape. According to the Fleet’s press center both military and civilians may use the boat.

Pacific Fleet Commander Mikhail Zakharenko met late last week with Mikhail Robkanov, general director of Vladivostok Marine Commercial Port, to reach an agreement that the port will provide a ferry every time the fleet needs it for emergency transportations of food, personnel and materiel. Port officials said they would do this within an hour of a fleet request.

The fleet has already responded to emergencies on the island. Last Thursday Russky doctors had to examine a 9-year-old boy with a bout of acute purulent appendicitis. The island doesn’t have an infant surgeon, so they called the Pacific Fleet’s medical department. A tugboat took the boy to a Vladivostok hospital. The boy was operated and his health condition is reportedly satisfactory.