On February 20, 2017 the shattering news reverberated throughout the United Nations, and the world:  the  charismatic and world renowned  Russian Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitali Churkin, was suddenly stricken in his office at the Russian Mission and pronounced dead upon arrival at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

The New York City Medical Examiner failed to discover the cause of Ambassador Churkin’s sudden death, stating that the autopsy is inconclusive and ‘determining the cause and manner of his death requires further study, which could require weeks of further screenings.’  For ten years Churkin had illuminated the corridors of the United Nations, and  a surrealistic atmosphere of disbelief and incredulity now permeates the United Nations, as unanswered questions regarding Ambassador Churkin’s death increase.

Vitali Churkin’s colossal intellectual power prevailed over the crass propaganda and hypocrisy of his detractors at the UN Security Council.  In so doing, he restored the credibility of the UN Security Council, and restored the dignity and independence of the United Nations.  His moral force and courage, even in isolation,  towered above his detractors at the Security Council, and within the General Assembly.

His prodigious knowledge of the historic context and realities being distorted by his opponents was a formidable obstacle to their chronic attempts to hijack and deform both the Security Council, and the UN itself, into becoming a tool for geopolitical engineering antithetical to the very purposes for which the UN was established.

Following the first Persian Gulf War, authorized by Security Council Resolution 678, the United Nations had become regarded as an annex of the US State Department and the Pentagon.  Security Council Resolution 1973 reinforced that impression, and, indeed, when Lakhdar Brahimi, formerly Foreign Minister of Algeria and top United Nations envoy, was asked why UN offices were so often  bombed, he replied that the UN was becoming perceived as a “party to disputes.”

Churkin’s arrival at the UN, and the re-emergence of Russia as a world power, with the Presidency of Vladimir Putin, re-established the United Nations as a multipolar organization, and with the six vetoes cast by Vitali Churkin, the United Nations was prevented from further debasement, as those vetoes prohibited the UN endorsement of the barbaric slaughter of yet another country in the Middle East.  Vitali Churkin commanded the respect of even those attempting to discredit him, and he was admired by even those who hated him for his capacity to expose their duplicity.

More than 25 years ago I first met Vitali Churkin at his office in the Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow.  I had been invited to Russia by Vladimir Petrovsky, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, and  I had been referred to Churkin by the International Editor of a major Soviet newspaper, who advised me that Mr. Churkin could solve an urgent problem I was confronting...