Vitaly I. Churkin
Encyclopedia
Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin (born February 21, 1952 in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

) is the current Permanent Representative (Ambassador
Ambassador
An ambassador is the highest ranking diplomat who represents a nation and is usually accredited to a foreign sovereign or government, or to an international organization....

) of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

. He replaced Andrey I. Denisov
Andrey I. Denisov
Andrey Ivanovich Denisov , born on October 3, 1952 in Kharkov, is the First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation. From 2004 to 2006, he was the Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations. He presented his credentials to the United Nations Secretary-General on August 4, 2004...

 on May 1, 2006, when he presented his credentials to the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...

.

Biography

He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1974, and began working for them then, and received a PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 from the USSR Diplomatic Academy
Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
The Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation also known as State Educational Institution Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, is a diplomatic institution established in 1934 to teach and train the diplomatic and...

 in 1981. He was then Director of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)/ Russian Federation. He also served as a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, and was Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation from 1992 to 1994.

Prior to his current diplomatic post, Churkin was his country’s Ambassador to Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 from 1994 to 1998, and to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 from 1998 to 2003. He was then Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, a post he held from 2003 to 2006.

He is also the chairman of the Senior Officials of the Arctic Council
Arctic Council
The Arctic Council is a high-level intergovernmental forum which addresses issues faced by the Arctic governments and the indigenous people of the Arctic.- History of the Arctic Council :...

. He is fluent in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

, Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

.

Churkin won some notoriety in 1986 when, as a 34-year-old second secretary, he was selected by then-Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin
Anatoly Dobrynin
Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin was a Russian statesman and a former Soviet diplomat and politician. He was Soviet Ambassador to the United States, serving from 1962 to 1986 and most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was appointed by Nikita Khrushchev....

 to testify before the United States Congress on the Chernobyl
Chernobyl
Chernobyl or Chornobyl is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city had been the administrative centre of the Chernobyl Raion since 1932....

 nuclear power station accident. This was reported as the first time in history a Soviet official testified before a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. The choice of Churkin, then a relatively junior diplomat, was due to his reputation as the most fluent English-speaker in the Soviet Embassy; media reported he possessed "an array of English slang." Churkin's performance led to his being parodied in a Washington Post political cartoon series, Mark Alan Stamaty
Mark Alan Stamaty
Mark Alan Stamaty is an American cartoonist and children's book writer and illustrator. During the 1980s and 1990s, Stamaty's work appeared regularly in the Village Voice...

's "Washingtoon", as Vitaly "Charmyourpantsoff".
1974 - graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations

1981 - PhD in history from the USSR Diplomatic Academy

1974 - joined the USSR Foreign Ministry

1974-79 - staff member of the USSR delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks

1979-82 - third secretary, US desk, USSR Foreign Ministry

1982-87 - second, first secretary, USSR Embassy in Washington DC

1987-89 - staff member, International Department, CPSU Central Committee

1989-90 - special adviser to the USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs

1990-91 - Director, Information Department, Spokesman of the USSR Foreign Ministry

1992-94 - Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation to the talks on Former Yugoslavia

1994-98 - Ambassador of Russia to Belgium
Ambassador of Russia to Belgium
This is a list of Ambassadors to Belgium of the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and the Russian Federation:- Russian Empire :* Mikhail Irineyevich Khreptovich; 11 April 1853 - 17 July 1856* Aleksandr Borisovich Rikhter; 17 July 1856 - 16 April 1859...

, Liaison Ambassador to NATO and WEU

1998-2003 - Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Canada

2003 - April 2006 - Ambassador at Large, MFA, Chairman of Senior Arctic Officials, Arctic Council, Senior Official of Russia at the Barents/Euro-Arctic Council

In 1985 he undertook a speaking tour of United States universities invited by USGov
.

April 8, 2006 - Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations
Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations
This is a list of permanent representatives of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation to the United Nations- Of the Soviet Union :- Of Russia :- External links :...

, Representative of the Russian Federation at the UN Security Council Diplomatic rank — Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (1990)

External links

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