Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, who represented his country through times of domestic tumult and rising tensions with the West, died on Monday morning while at work in Manhattan. He would have turned 65 on Tuesday.
Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin was born in Moscow on Feb. 21, 1952. He held a Ph.D. in history and was a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He began his career in the Soviet era and quickly rose through his country’s diplomatic corps as the Soviet Union was opening up under Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He was a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry from 1990 to 1992, represented his country in peace talks in the former Yugoslavia, and became ambassador to Belgium and Canada before taking on the United Nations post in 2006.