Russia has lost the diplomat who spoke for it in Washington. Alexander Darchiev, who had run the Russian embassy in the United States for about a year and a half, passed away on Wednesday aged 66, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
The first announcement was strikingly brief. It called the death “sudden” but gave no place and no cause, which quickly set off a wave of speculation in American outlets. By the evening, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stepped in on Telegram, saying Darchiev had died in Moscow of a chronic illness and accusing parts of the US press of conspiracy theories. Details of the funeral are to follow.
Darchiev was regarded at home as one of the foreign service’s leading America specialists. His résumé ran almost entirely through the Americas: an earlier posting as Moscow’s envoy in Ottawa, years in charge of the ministry’s North American desk, and before that a senior spell at the very embassy he would one day head. He took over from Anatoly Antonov in March 2025, weeks after Donald Trump began his second term.
Shortly before that appointment he led the Russian team at talks with US officials in Istanbul, which focused on easing the day-to-day work of both countries’ embassies. In its tribute the ministry praised him as an “outstanding diplomat” and an experienced leader and mentor.
The timing adds weight to the loss. Contacts between Moscow and Washington have picked up again: US-brokered talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations wrapped up in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, and American envoys are expected in Moscow next. It is not yet clear who will run the embassy in the meantime.
Russia has lost a senior envoy in office without warning before. Vitaly Churkin, its long-serving envoy to the United Nations, collapsed and died in New York in February 2017, aged 64.
