Vitaly Churkin
Soviet and Russian diplomat (1952-2017)

Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin (Russian: Виталий Иванович Чуркин, IPA: [vʲɪˈtalʲɪj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ ˈtɕurkʲɪn]; 21 February 1952 – 20 February 2017) was a Russian diplomat. He served as Russia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2006 until his death in 2017. Previously he was Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (2003–2006), Ambassador to Canada (1998–2003), Ambassador to Belgium and Liaison Ambassador to NATO and WEU (1994–1998), Deputy Foreign Minister and Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation to the talks on Former Yugoslavia (1992–1994), and Director of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR/Russian Federation (1990–1992).
Churkin was fluent in English, French and Mongolian. As a child actor, he starred in three films The Blue Notebook, Nol tri, and A Mother's Heart.
Early life and career
Churkin was born in Moscow. In 1963, at age 11, he played Kolya Yemelyanov in the Lev Kulidzhanov film The Blue Notebook, 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.
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.
“Vitaly Churkin” enters the record as soviet and Russian diplomat (1952-2017). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Vitaly, Churkin and Soviet can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1394102. VIAF identifies the subject as 540156919245354970001. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2017, 2006 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vitaly Churkin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.