Sergey Kislyak

Sergey Kislyak combined technical education with a diplomatic career in arms control. A graduate of the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the Academy of Foreign Trade, he entered the Foreign Ministry in 1977. He served at the Soviet mission to the United Nations in 1981–1985 and in the Washington embassy in 1985–1989. In Moscow he subsequently directed departments responsible for international scientific cooperation and for security and disarmament. ^{2, 1}

From 1998 to 2003 he was ambassador to Belgium and Russia’s representative to NATO, followed by five years as deputy foreign minister. He returned to Washington as ambassador in 2008 and remained until 2017. At a Carnegie Council discussion in April 2009, he urged agreement on a successor to the expiring START treaty, including limits on delivery systems as well as warheads. He described cooperation against nuclear terrorism as an area in which American and Russian officials had continued working together through deteriorating relations. ^{1, 3, 2}

His contacts with Donald Trump’s incoming administration became the subject of intense scrutiny. A declassified transcript records his 29 December 2016 telephone conversation with Michael Flynn. Flynn asked Russia to avoid escalating its response to the outgoing administration’s sanctions and expulsions; Kislyak said he would convey that position to Moscow and raised the implications of sanctions on Russian intelligence agencies for counterterrorism cooperation. The calls subsequently figured in the investigation of Flynn’s statements to the FBI. ^{4, 5}

After leaving the embassy, Kislyak entered Russia’s Federation Council. The Russian International Affairs Council’s profile records both that parliamentary role and his earlier service as permanent observer to the Organization of American States alongside the Washington ambassadorship. ²