Konstantin Kosachev

Konstantin Iosifovich Kosachev (Константин Иосифович Косачев; born 17 September 1962) is a Russian politician and former diplomat.

He is a senator at the Federation Council (Russian parliament's upper house) and chairs its Foreign Affairs Committee.

Konstantin Kosachev was born in the Pushkin district of Moscow Oblast on 17 September 1962 to Nina G. and Joseph Artemyevitch Kosachev, a diplomat who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR.

He lived in Sweden eight years and attended school there.

He later studied in Moscow, graduating in 1979.

In 1984, Kosachev graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

He is fluent in Swedish and English.

As a translator, Kosachev worked in various diplomatic posts in the central and foreign offices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and Russia.

In 1991 he graduated from training at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Kosachev became First Secretary of Russian Embassy in Sweden in 1991.

He was named advisor to the embassy in 1994.

Kosachev participated in several international conferences on European security and disarmament.

He was part of an advisory group to the Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs.

He was also deputy director of the 2nd European Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, in charge of implementing Russian foreign policy in the Nordic area.

From May 1998 Kosachev was first an adviser, then an assistant for international affairs to the Prime Minister (under Sergey Kiriyenko, Yevgeny Primakov, and Sergei Stepashin).

He also served as Secretariat of the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation.

He was elected to the State Duma in 1999.

From 19 December 1999 to December 2003, Kosachev was a deputy of the 3rd State Duma of the Russian Federation, the first deputy head of the Fatherland – All Russia political faction, and deputy chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Kosachev was a member of the Commissions to assist the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in overcoming the consequences of the NATO bombing, to implement the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the Russian Federation, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and to conclude a new treaty on further reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms (New START).

In 2003, Kosachev defended his Ph.D. thesis on "The concept of development of international law in the fight against nuclear terrorism" at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

From 2003 to 2007, Kosachev was deputy of the 4th State Duma of the Russian Federation and part of the United Russia party.

He served as Chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee.

Kosachev headed the State Duma's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) from 2004 to 2012.

He served as vice-speaker of PACE and coordinated a Deputy group for relations with the Swedish Parliament.

In 2005, Kosachev wrote an article entitled "Why Would a Bear Need Wings", challenging then-Chairman of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov's position that the United Russia party did not need working groups.

When considering the 2006 resolution condemning communist regimes, Kosachev declared it inadmissible to equate communism and Nazism: "It is impossible to equate the communist ideology and the ideology of Nazism".

On 2 December 2007, he was elected deputy of the 5th State Duma of the Russian Federation and continued to chair the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee.

On 4 December 2011, Kosachev was elected deputy of the 6th State Duma of the Russian Federation.

He was elected Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee.

He was appointed head of Rossotrudnichestvo in 2012.

On 5 March 2012, Vladimir Putin appointed Kosachev head of Rossotrudnichestvo, the Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation and the Russian President's Special Envoy for Relations with CIS Member-States.

In December 2014, he became a member of the Federation Council.

On 18 December 2014, Kosachev was appointed Federation Council representative by the heads of the Chuvash Republic.

A week later, on 25 December 2014, he was elected Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs.

On 21 September 2015, Kosachev was named representative of the Government of the Mari El Republic in the Russian Federation Council.

In September 2015 Kosachev was included in the sanctions list of individuals and entities adopted the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

He has been on the US sanctions list since 2018.

After graduating from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Kosachev was a diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Sweden.

In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on him and 23 other Russian nationals.

Sanctioned by the UK government in 2022 in relation to Russo-Ukrainian War.