NEW YORK – Medical examiners who performed an autopsy on Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations said Tuesday that more tests are needed to determine how and why he fell ill in his office and later died.
Vitaly Churkin, who died Monday, a day before his 65th birthday, had been Russia’s envoy at the UN since 2006. He was the longest-serving ambassador on the Security Council, the UN’s most powerful body.
New York City’s medical examiners concluded Churkin’s death needed further study, which usually includes toxicology and other screenings. They can take weeks.
The medical examiner is responsible for investigating deaths that occur by criminal violence, by accident, by suicide, suddenly or when the person seemed healthy, or in any unusual or suspicious manner. Most of the deaths investigated by the office are not suspicious.
Churkin’s case was referred to the medical examiner’s office by the hospital, spokeswoman Julie Bolcer said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Churkin’s “professionalism and diplomatic talents,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the state news agency TASS. Moscow has not yet given a date for Churkin’s funeral.
Diplomatic colleagues from around the world mourned Churkin as a master in their field, saying he was deeply knowledgeable about diplomacy and dedicated to his country while also being a personable and witty colleague.
“He could spot even the narrowest opportunities to find a compromise,” U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Tuesday, calling Churkin “brilliant, wise, gracious, and funny.”
Her predecessor, Samantha Power, described him on Twitter as a “diplomatic maestro and deeply caring man” who had done all he could to bridge differences between the U.S. and Russia.
Those differences were evident when Power and Churkin spoke at the Security Council last month, and Power lashed out at Russia for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and for carrying out “a merciless military assault” in Syria. Churkin countered that Democratic former President Barack Obama’s administration, in which Power served, was “desperately” searching for scapegoats for its failures in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Churkin died weeks into some major adjustments for Russia, the UN and the international community, with a new secretary-general at the world body and a new administration in Washington. Meanwhile, the Security Council discussed Ukraine on Tuesday and is set to discuss Syria later in the week.
Ukraine is currently holding the Security Council’s rotating presidency, and Ukrainian Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko led members Tuesday in a moment of silence in Churkin’s memory. Yelchenko didn’t add his own words to the tributes that followed, though Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin gave condolences when reporters asked afterward.
