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Vitaly Churkin

Soviet and Russian diplomat (1952-2017)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ1394102
Source-derived summary

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.

Editorial summary

“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.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1952, 2017, 2006, 2003—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1952-02-21. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Vitaly, Churkin and Soviet.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Vitaly Churkin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Vitaly, Churkin and Soviet provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

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.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

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.