Andrey Kozyrev - Biography

Andrey Vladimirovich Kozyrev (Андрей Владимирович Козырев; born March 27, 1951 in Brussels) was the foreign minister of Russia under President Boris Yeltsin from October 1991 until his dismissal in January 1996. The son of a Soviet diplomat, he was born in Brussels, Belgium. Andrey Kozyrev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in 1978, and held various posts including the Head of the Department of International Organizations.

After the failed Soviet coup attempt of 1991, he found himself in Yeltsin's team of young reformers, which included Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, and shared their Western liberal-democratic ideals.

At the UN General Assembly Kozyrev declared in 1993, by the time of the end of Abkhazian War: “Russia realizes that no international organization or group of states can replace our peacekeeping efforts in this specific post-Soviet space.”

Kozyrev was criticized by the Russian State Duma for capitulating to the West, which led to Russia's loss of the position of "superpower", as well as for the alleged failure to support the Bosnian Serbs during Bosnian War. He was succeeded by Yevgeny Primakov.