Anna Yarkova, left, takes photos of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's Challenger Center on Monday while she and other Russian delegates take a tour of UTC's campus.
Gennadiy Fedorov participates in a bus tour of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on Monday as he and other Russian Sister City delegates visit Chattanooga in an attempt to determine how the city revitalized its image over the past couple of decades.Relations between Capitol Hill and Moscow may be tense, but Chattanooga and Nizhny Tagil, Russia, are happily continuing a 15-year-old friendship.
Five delegates from the Russian sister city are visiting the Scenic City this week, specifically to learn how Chattanooga cleaned up its industrial act.
On Monday, the Russian delegation -- made up of a college professor, a government budget inspector, a steelworker, an obstetrician-gynecologist and a public relations professional -- sat for a roundtable discussion with University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students and toured the campus.
The delegation will return home Sunday, but between now and then they have many people to meet, according to Irina Khmelko, a UTC professor and vice president of the Chattanooga Sister City Association.
The delegation will be meeting with nonprofits, government officials and businesses to learn how the three worked together to bring Chattanooga out of an age of pollution.
"They approached us through the sister city program. They wanted to learn about how [Chattanooga] has come from the darkest, dirtiest of cities to how it is today," Khmelko said. "They are a midsized city, and their environment is very similar to how ours was 30 or 40 years ago."
Speaking through an interpreter, delegate Anna Yarkova, a corporate communications manager, said she already has seen some similarities between Chattanooga and her home -- despite Nizhny Tagil being east of the Ural Mountains, about a 25-hour car ride east of Moscow.
"We both have industrial backgrounds, however the climate is very different. We have snow, for example," she said. "But we also have a park next to a river we are trying to develop. And just as we show hospitality, people in Chattanooga have been very hospitable."
Michelle Deardorff, head of UTC's political science, public administration and nonprofit management program, said Monday's roundtable discussion was good for the delegation and for the students.
The delegates fielded questions from students about the environment, government and culture in Nizhny Tagil.
"Our students are interacting with people who come from a very different political climate and culture," Deardorff said. "It's interesting for our students to understand that the political assumptions they have been trained to make -- basically since kindergarten -- don't always fit."
Karen Claypool, president of the Sister City Association, said that during the more-than-15-year relationship two Chattanooga delegations have visited Russia, and this is the third group of Russians to visit. Nizhny Tagil is one of Chattanooga's seven sister cities, she said.
Contact staff writer Louie Brogdon at lbrogdon@timesfreepress.com, at @glbrogdoniv on Twitter or at 423-757-6481.