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Andrei Kozyrev

Andrei Kozyrev is a Russian diplomat who served as the Russian Federation's Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Boris Yeltsin from 1991 to 1996. As the country's first foreign minister, Kozyrev was involved in the negotiations among Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus regarding the secession of those republics and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. From 1996 to 2000, he represented the port city of Murmansk in the Duma, a chamber of the Russian Parliament. He left Russia in 2010 to settle in the United States.

A former Distinguished Fellow at The Wilson Center, Kozyrev is also the author of several books about his home country, including The Arms Race: A New Level of Danger; The Firebird: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy, an insider’s look at the collapse of the USSR; and The Caligula Curse, a 2021 novel about an American doctor in Russia.

Articles by this Author

The former foreign minister of Russia provides a unique look inside his country's leadership and reflects on the prospects for democracy there.