Igor Ivanov


Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov is a Russian politician who was Foreign Minister of Russia from 1998 to 2004.

Early life

Ivanov was born in 1945 in Moscow to a Russian father and a Georgian mother. In 1969 he graduated at the Maurice Thorez Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages. He joined the Soviet Foreign Ministry in 1973 and spent a decade in Spain. He returned to the Soviet Union in 1983. In 1991 he became the ambassador in Madrid.

Minister of Foreign Affairs

He was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs on September 11, 1998. As Russian foreign minister, Ivanov was an opponent of NATO's action in Yugoslavia. He was also an opponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Ivanov played a key role in mediating a deal between Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze and opposition parties during Georgia's "Rose Revolution" in 2003.

Resignation

Ivanov was succeeded to the post of foreign minister by Sergey Lavrov in 2004, and appointed by President Vladimir Putin to the post of Secretary of the Security Council, followed shortly by the appointment of Sergey Lavrov as foreign minister.
On 9 July 2007 he submitted his resignation. On 18 July, President Putin accepted Ivanov's resignation and appointed Valentin Sobolev as acting secretary,
Ivanov is professor of Moscow State Institute of International Relations, member of the Supervisory Council of the International Luxembourg Forum on Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe and member of the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation. Igor Ivanov is the President of Russian International Affairs Council.
In 2011 Ivanov became a member of the advisory council of The Hague Institute for Global Justice and in 2014 worked for The Moscow Times.

Honours and awards