Alexander Darchiev, Russia's ambassador to the United States, has died at 66, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday, saying only that he "passed away suddenly."
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova later said Darchiev died in Moscow of an unspecified chronic illness, according to the Associated Press. A source told CNN that he had left Washington and gone back to Moscow, where he was being treated for a long-term illness.
The ministry's statement called him "an outstanding diplomat, an experienced leader, a kind friend, and a mentor" and "a brilliant expert on American affairs" who worked in "one of the most critical areas of Russian foreign policy." It gave no date or place for a funeral, and Zakharova said details of a memorial service would follow.
Putin sent Darchiev to Washington in March 2025 to run Moscow's side of the reset with the Trump administration, replacing Anatoly Antonov, after the US approved his appointment. In late February that year he had led Russia's delegation at the Istanbul talks with US diplomats on getting the two countries' embassies working again, a closed-door session that ran more than six hours.
A career Americanist, Darchiev had served as minister-counselor at the Russian embassy in Washington, spent 2014 to 2021 as ambassador to Canada, and headed the Foreign Ministry's North America department. The Moscow Times quoted former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev describing him as a protégé of Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov.
From the North America department, Darchiev spoke for Moscow on the 2022 talks that would trade arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA star Brittney Griner. "The discussions on the very sensitive topic of an exchange are proceeding via the channels chosen by our presidents," he told TASS in August 2022.
On Ukraine he held the Kremlin line: he declared in 2014 that "Crimea is Russia, once and for all," and in March 2022 defended the invasion as a "necessary measure."
His death comes in the middle of the Abu Dhabi talks on ending the war, which on Wednesday produced a "large-scale" prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine.
It also recalls another sudden loss for Russia's diplomatic corps in the US: Vitaly Churkin, Moscow's ambassador to the United Nations, died suddenly in New York in February 2017, at 64.