Vitaly Churkin

Vitaly Churkin as Kolya Yemelyanov and Mikhail Kuznetsov as Vladimir Lenin in the 1963 Soviet film Sinyaya Tetrad

Churkin was born in Moscow. In 1963, at age 11, he played Kolya Yemelyanov in the Lev Kulidzhanov movie Sinyaya Tetrad, about Vladimir Lenin. In 1964, he acted in a movie, Nol tri, about paramedics. In 1967, he played a peasant boy, Fedka, in Mark Donskoy's movie, A Mother's Heart, about Vladimir Lenin, and then he stopped his artistic career to concentrate on English language studies.[2]

He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1974, and began working for them then, and he received a PhD in History from the USSR Diplomatic Academy in 1981. Subsequently, he was Director of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. He also served as a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, and he was Deputy Foreign Minister from 1992 to 1994.[3]

Churkin was Russia's Ambassador to Belgium from 1994 to 1998, and the Ambassador to Canada from 1998 to 2003. Subsequently, he served as Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2003 to 2006. He replaced Andrey Denisov as the Permanent Representative to the United Nations on 1 May 2006, when he presented his credentials to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan. He was the Chairman of the Senior Officials of the Arctic Council.[4]

Churkin won some notoriety in 1986 when, as a 34-year-old second secretary, he was selected by Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin to testify before the United States Congress on the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident.[5] This was reported as the first time in history a Soviet official had testified before a Congressional committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.[6] 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".[6] Churkin's performance led to his being parodied in Mark Alan Stamaty's Washingtoon, a political cartoon series in The Washington Post, as Vitaly "Charmyourpantsoff".

• 1974 – Graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations
• 1974 – Joined the USSR Foreign Ministry
• 1974–1979 – Staff member of the USSR delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
• 1979–1982 – Third secretary, US desk, USSR Foreign Ministry
• 1981 – PhD in history from the USSR Diplomatic Academy
• 1982–1987 – Second, first secretary, USSR Embassy in Washington DC
• 1985 – Undertook a speaking tour of United States universities invited by USGov
• 1987–1989 – Staff member, International Department, CPSU Central Committee
• 1989–1990 – Special adviser to the USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs
• 1990–1991 – Director, Information Department, Spokesman of the USSR Foreign Ministry
• 1992–1994 – Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation to the talks on Former Yugoslavia
• 1994–1998 – Ambassador of Russia to Belgium, Liaison Ambassador to NATO and WEU
• 1998–2003 – Ambassador of Russia 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
• 8 April 2006 – Permanent Representative of Russia to the United Nations, Representative of the Russian Federation at the UN Security Council Diplomatic rank — Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (1990)

Churkin died in New York City on 20 February 2017, the eve of his 65th birthday.[16] The immediate cause was heart failure, according to Russian diplomat Sergei Ordzhonikidze.[17] The Russian Foreign Ministry noted that Churkin died while at work and expressed condolences to Churkin's family.[18] India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin, also expressed his condolences, calling Churkin a "friend" and a "stalwart diplomat".[19] Former President Barack Obama's UN Ambassador, Samantha Power, tweeted that she was "devastated" and described Churkin as a "diplomatic maestro" who did all he could to bridge U.S.-Russia differences. Britain's ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, tweeted that he was "absolutely devastated", describing Churkin as "a diplomatic giant & wonderful character".[20]

On 21 February 2017, the New York City Medical Examiner's Office released the preliminary results of an autopsy performed on Churkin, which states that the cause of death needed further study, which often indicates the need for toxicology tests.[21] A gag order pursuant to a request of the U.S. State Department and the United States Mission to the United Nations suppressed public disclosure of the cause and manner of death, citing Churkin's posthumous diplomatic immunity; Russia maintained that the information was private and that disclosing details of the autopsy results could hurt his reputation.[22][23] Churkin was posthumously awarded the Russian Order of Courage on 21 February 2017[24] and the Order of the Serbian Flag 1st class.[25]

Churkin was the 5th Russian diplomat posted abroad to die unexpectedly, in a remarkably similar fashion, since November 2016, the first such death having occurred on the morning of the U.S. presidential election, 8 November 2016, inside the Russian consulate in NYC, – a fact that caused conspiracy theorists to try to detect a pattern.[26][27][28] The apparent pattern was followed by a sudden death of Russian ambassador to Sudan Migayas Shirinskiy in the capital Khartoum in August 2017.[29] Hours after Shirinskiy's death, Russia's government-owned news agency TASS published a list of names and brief biographies of senior Russian diplomats (naming five), who had died "of natural causes" "in the past two years" (in fact, since 30 May 2016, the day when Russian Chargés d'affaires ad interim to Ukraine Andrei Vorobyov, aged 57, died suddenly in Moscow), that included Churkin.[30] His death was likewise cited in a list published in early May 2017 by USA Today — as one in a series of "dozens of high-profile" Russians' deaths, such as GRU chief Igor Sergun's (January 2016), in "the past three years in Russia and abroad in suspicious circumstances".[31]

• List of Permanent Representatives to the United Nations

• Vitaly Churkin at IMDb
• Russian mission to the UN
  • Vitaly Churkin
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Vitaly Churkin on Charlie Rose
• Works by or about Vitaly Churkin in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• New Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation Presents Credentials – UN press release
• Arctic Council home page