The head of the Rostov Ministry of Health has resigned.

There is currently no information about who will take over as Minister of Health of the Rostov Region.

Yuri Kobzev graduated from Rostov State Medical University in 1997 and received a degree in public and municipal administration from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2011. He was subsequently appointed chief physician of the Taganrog Consultative and Diagnostic Center.

In 2014, he became the chief physician of the Taganrog City Emergency Hospital. His political career also began: he was elected to the Taganrog City Duma as a member of the United Russia party, where he chaired the standing committee on social policy, labor, and citizen protection.

He left his post as head of the Emergency Hospital in the fall of 2016, after which he became a State Duma deputy and joined the Health Protection Committee. In mid-December 2020, he became Minister of Health of the Rostov Region, replacing Tatyana Bykovskaya, who resigned on October 27 "due to retirement" and "of her own volition."

The official's resignation followed the deaths of COVID-19 patients on ventilators at one of the city's repurposed medical centers. Local media speculated that the deaths may have been due to a lack of medical oxygen. However, regional authorities denied the allegations.

In November 2019, Bykovskaya also became a defendant in a criminal case for abuse of office (Part 1, Article 286 of the Russian Criminal Code). Investigators believed she had spent a year assisting Alexander Danchenko, head of the Swiss company AFD Group SA, whose company had established a regional medical waste disposal company, Center 100 Rostov-on-Don. Following a tender, the company entered into an anticompetitive agreement with the regional Ministry of Health and four local medical organizations for the provision of Class B medical waste management services.

In late March 2024, the Kushchevsky District Court of the Krasnodar Territory sentenced Tatyana Bykovskaya. The former official was found guilty and sentenced to 4.5 years in a general regime penal colony. Bykovskaya's defense team announced that they disagreed with the verdict and would appeal it. In October 2024, the Cassation Board of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation began hearing Bykovskaya's appeal.

On January 14, 2025, the Fourth Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in Krasnodar dismissed the defense's appeals.