Russia has appointed a new ambassador to Greece, naming Yuri Andreyevich Gorlach to lead its diplomatic mission in Athens. He succeeds Andrei Maslov, who had headed the Russian Embassy in Athens since 2014.
The appointment was made by presidential decree, signed Friday by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Gorlach, born in 1960, graduated in 1983 from MGIMO, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, in what was then the Soviet Union. A career diplomat, he joined Russia’s Foreign Ministry the same year and has since held a range of posts, both at the ministry’s headquarters in Moscow and abroad. He speaks English and Spanish.
From 2005 to 2014, he served as deputy director of the ministry’s Department of All-European Cooperation. In July 2014, he was named Russia’s deputy permanent representative to NATO, a position he held until January 2018. He then continued in the role of acting permanent representative of the Russian Federation to NATO in Brussels from 2018 to 2021.
In June 2017, he was awarded the diplomatic rank of Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, First Class.
On October 1, 2021, Gorlach took over as director of the Foreign Ministry’s Crisis Management Center, the post he held until his new assignment to Athens.
