Sergey Lavrov

Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov (, ; born 21 March 1950) is a Russian diplomat who has served as the foreign minister of Russia since 2004. He is the longest-serving Russian foreign minister since Andrei Gromyko during the Soviet Union.

Lavrov was born in Moscow and graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) in 1972. He received his first Soviet diplomatic posting in Sri Lanka, and speaks fluent Sinhala, Dhivehi, English, and French, in addition to his native Russian. From 1981 to 1988 Lavrov held several posts in the Soviet Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York City. Starting in the late 1980s he was deputy director and then director of the Foreign Ministry's Department of International Organizations before becoming a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1992. He later served as the permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004. Provided by Wikipedia