President’s Advisor on Foreign Policy

NAME: SERGEI EDUARDOVICH PRIKHODKO

BORN: 12 January 1957 in Moscow.

EDUCATION: *Mr Prikhodko graduated from Moscow State Institute of International Relations under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in 1980.

CAREER: *Upon graduation, Mr Prikhodko embarked on a diplomatic career at the Soviet Embassy in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.  *He served as an attaché, then Third Secretary of the Socialist European Countries Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR from 1986 to 1987?  *Mr Prikhodko was Second Secretary, then First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in Czechoslovakia from 1992 to 1993.  *He was head of division, then Chief of Division, then Deputy Head of Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation from 1993 to 1997.  *Mr Prikhodko served as an Aide to the President of the Russian Federation from 1997 to 1998.  *He was appointed Deputy Head of the Presidential Executive Office in 1998.  *Mr Prikhodko was given the additional responsibility of Head of the Presidential Foreign Policy Directorate in 1999.  *He was reappointed Aide to the President of the Russian Federation in March 2004.

MISCELLANEOUS: *Mr Prikhodko is generally considered to be more influential than Sergei Lavrov.  *He is thought to be a Muscovite Pragmatist, a professional technocrat with a mildly, westernised, liberal outlook.