The biography of some candidates for the Murmansk City Council raises many questions. Among these characters – Svyatoslav Shirvel. On the eve of the elections, Chronicles.Media reveals the secrets of his family: crime, business, grants for charity and much more.
Elections to the Murmansk City Council are scheduled for September 8, 2024. In the local parliament, the majority of deputies represent the United Russia party. Among them are many public sector employees: heads of educational and medical institutions of the city. However, this time many entrepreneurs appeared among the candidates, including those whose reputation is in doubt. One of these fighters for the mandate is Svyatoslav Shirvel. Together with his mother Olga Sklyarova, he is nominated from United Russia.
Shirvel actively participates in official events of the regional governor Andrey Chibis, which are held under the slogan “Live in the North”.
The candidate also likes to participate in less formal corporate events under the same slogan.
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TV Donor Goes into Politics
Svyatoslav Shirvel already stated in 2021 that he wants to participate in by-elections to the City Council. As a result, only his mother Olga Sklyarova went to them. She failed to get elected, receiving only 127 votes (the winners received 600-700 votes each), having been nominated by the Pensioners’ Party for Social Justice. The Meduza publication called this party controlled by the administration of the President of the Russian Federation.
Svyatoslav Shirvel is known in political circles in Murmansk. In 2020–2022, he headed the regional branch of the Young Guard of United Russia (MGER). During this period, he found himself at the center of a local scandal: anonymous telegram channels published correspondence from chats looking for part-time work, where Shirvel allegedly offered everyone 200 rubles to lay flowers at the monuments of military sailors.
Two weeks before becoming the head of MGER, he received a position at the Murmansk Region Development Corporation. There he became involved in public-private partnership projects.
Now Shirvel heads the Murmansk donor organization “A Drop of Life”. It is registered directly in his apartment on Kapitana Orlikova Street. He appointed his mother as his deputy. “A Drop of Life” works closely with “United Russia” and receives millions in grants from the authorities. Since 2017, “A Drop of Blood” has submitted seven applications to the Presidential Grants Fund in the amount of 13.1 million rubles, of which it received half.
Shirvel’s official biography states that he began his social and political activities in 2017, when he became an assistant to a deputy of the Murmansk Regional Duma. However, in fact, “A Drop of Life” was created in 2016. Among its founders were Shirvel, his mother, current wife Irina and social activist Konstantin Bazanov. Shirvel calls him “best friend” on VKontakte.
In 2017, the donor, Chronicles.Media found out, also represented the party project “United Country – Accessible Environment.” Later, the activist joined the youth chamber of the regional Duma, and in 2019 he participated in the United Russia personnel project “PolitStartap”. There, Shirvel is remembered for helping an elderly Murmansk woman set up her TV.
Criminal fishing
However, what Shirvel did before is much more interesting. In his biography, he mentions that he lived as a modest entrepreneur, worked in the entertainment industry, and was also the development director of a relatively small fish trading company, Belokamenka-Trade LLC. However, there are other “fish” traces that Shirvel prefers not to mention.
So, at the age of 16, he joined two agricultural cooperatives at once: the fishing collective farms “Gremikha” and “Wolverine”. The latter was headed by Shirvel’s father Valerian. Shirvel Sr. also had another fishing business. And this area in the Murmansk region has always been among the interests of crime. However Valerian Shirvel met bandits long before he became a “fisherman.”
Archival data that Chronicles.Media was able to obtain shows that in the 1990s, Shirvel Sr. had serious problems with the law. Crime reports from 1993 mentioned:
The personality of not only Shirvel, but also Vtorov N.A., known as Nikolay Vtorov, or “Deut.” Journalist Andrey Konstantinov in the book “Gangster Russia” he called Vtorov “a teacher-guru for many future Murmansk criminal leaders”:
Vtorov was killed in a criminal showdown almost 30 years ago. Valerian Shirvel, according to the Chronicles, also died many years ago. His son says nothing about his father or his youth on the fishing collective farms.
Legacy of Authority
Nothing remains of the Gremikha and Wolverine collective farm cooperatives for a long time. They were liquidated in 2011. However, the fishing business empire named after Shirvel continues to exist. Valerian’s second wife and Svyatoslav’s stepmother, Irina Shirvel, with her new husband from Spain, became a major figure in the fishing industry of the Murmansk region.
Election commissions have still not provided information on the income and property of candidates for the Murmansk City Council. After the start of the SVO in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin allowed the annual anti-corruption declarations of deputies and officials not to be published, so pre-election declarations are the last opportunity to find out what they own, how much and where future deputies earn. However, Valerian Shirvel, as Chronicles.Media found out, left something to his heirs.
Thus, from the decision of the Leninsky Court of Murmansk from 2015, it became known that in 2009, Shirvel Jr. and his half-sister Polina inherited an apartment.
In 2011, the brother bought out his sister’s share.
Difficult family
Shirvel speaks publicly only about social activities, although he continues to be involved in business. Since 2023, he is again an individual entrepreneur. Engaged in rental and leasing of vehicles and equipment for them. Since 2019, Shirvel has also been the sole owner and director of the Krasnodar company Spetstransservice. Officially, she does not conduct any activities.
Together with his wife Shirvel they are raising two children: Stefania and Daniel.
My wife Irina also has an interesting family. Her father Sergey Afonin worked for many years in management positions at VimpelCom. In 2008, he headed the Stavropol branch of the company, then became the head of the VimpelCom representative office throughout the southern region of Russia, and in 2019–2020 he was the general director of Beeline Uzbekistan.
Even more interesting is the story of Irina’s grandfather – Gennady Afonina. In 2007, he was elected to the State Duma of the Stavropol Territory, was a member of the United Russia faction, but served only one convocation. Before and after that, he held senior positions at chemical enterprises in the Stavropol region. Afonin owns 27% of the shares of the New Technologies company. It is a leader in the production of polyurethane foam in Russia and the CIS countries. Over the years, his son Sergei and even his granddaughter Irina, Shirvel’s wife, were also co-owners of the company. The company’s revenue for 2023 amounted to 1.4 billion rubles.
