UNITED NATIONS — On a cold February afternoon three years ago, Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, summoned reporters to the Russian mission on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Winter Olympics were about to start in the Russian city of Sochi. Russia was under growing criticism for shielding the Syrian government as it blocked aid from reaching rebel areas. And two members of the Russian dissident rock band Pussy Riot had just landed in New York, where they had met with Mr. Churkin’s American counterpart, Samantha Power.
What did he make of that? Mr. Churkin, in a gray tweed coat, his silver hair swept back as usual, was deadpan in his response. “Oh, she has not joined the band?” he wondered aloud. “I would expect her to invite them to perform at the National Cathedral in Washington.”
Steely, sardonic, unsentimental, this was peak Churkin.
He put those tools to use often as ambassador, rebutting criticism of Russia’s actions, such as its backing of forces suspected of war crimes in Syria or its own violations of international law in Ukraine. He seized on what he regarded as his critics’ hypocrisy, often employing that same wit, sarcasm and steely demeanor.
UNITED NATIONS — On a cold February afternoon three years ago, Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, summoned reporters to the Russian mission on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Winter Olympics were about to start in the Russian city of Sochi. Russia was under growing criticism for shielding the Syrian government as it blocked aid from reaching rebel areas. And two members of the Russian dissident rock band Pussy Riot had just landed in New York, where they had met with Mr. Churkin’s American counterpart, Samantha Power.
What did he make of that? Mr. Churkin, in a gray tweed coat, his silver hair swept back as usual, was deadpan in his response. “Oh, she has not joined the band?” he wondered aloud. “I would expect her to invite them to perform at the National Cathedral in Washington.”
Steely, sardonic, unsentimental, this was peak Churkin.
He put those tools to use often as ambassador, rebutting criticism of Russia’s actions, such as its backing of forces suspected of war crimes in Syria or its own violations of international law in Ukraine. He seized on what he regarded as his critics’ hypocrisy, often employing that same wit, sarcasm and steely demeanor.
Mr. Churkin, who died suddenly while at work on Monday after a decade as ambassador, had long defended Moscow’s staunch ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, even as Syrian forces blocked humanitarian aid from reaching civilians in opposition-held areas during the long, brutal civil war.
Yet Mr. Churkin was among the first to seize on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, where Western nations are backing a Saudi-led military coalition battling Houthi insurgents. Mr. Churkin insisted that the Security Council hold monthly briefings on the situation.
Once, he proposed humanitarian pauses so aid could get into Yemen and went on to criticize his Western colleagues on the Council for paying what he called “lip service” to the suffering of ordinary Yemenis.
It was a jaw-dropping performance, considering that Syrian forces, and later, Russia’s own warplanes were pummeling civilians in opposition-held cities and towns across Syria.
“His line of defense was never ‘We are holier than thou,’” said Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “His line of defense with the U.S. was ‘Look at your track record.’”
A United Nations diplomat recalled a closed-door meeting in which Mr. Churkin dismissed a suggestion to include women in peace talks. Get the belligerents to stop fighting instead, he said, somewhat snarkily, the diplomat recalled.
This, in turn, led Ms. Power to deliver a speech about the value of women’s leadership. Mr. Churkin yawned, the diplomat recalled, and then he walked out before she could finish.
It was often said that Mr. Churkin, a onetime child actor, leveraged his talents on the high-stakes diplomatic stage. But that does not entirely explain who he was. He had also once been a competitive speed skater. And perhaps most important, he had seen how a global superpower — his own nation — could disassemble and transform, and how its standing in the world could change.
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Mr. Churkin was trained as a diplomat during the height of the Cold War, but he came into prominence as the Soviet Union was breaking apart. He was a spokesman for his Foreign Ministry in the early 1990s. He played a key role in persuading Serbs to cooperate with NATO. He served as the Russian ambassador to Belgium and Canada before his 10 years as Moscow’s envoy to the United Nations. He knew the West, and he witnessed his country’s relations with the West, specifically the United States, sink in recent years.
I was struck by how incensed he had been in early 2014 by what he considered Western meddling in Ukraine, where protests had led to the ouster of its pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych.
He scoffed at the sight of a senior American diplomat, Victoria J. Nuland, handing out cookies to protesters. He called it a “symbol of condescension,” and derided it as “Ukrainians eating out of an American hand.”
He could also be prickly about how he came across publicly. Last fall, in an article on the military assault on Aleppo, Syria, I quoted Mr. Churkin as saying, through a Russian interpreter, that Mr. Assad had shown “enviable restraint.”
He upbraided me publicly the next day. He said he had been referring specifically to Mr. Assad’s conduct in the aftermath of an accidental American bombing of Syrian troops.
I told him that that was not what I had heard the interpreter say, which annoyed him even more. He had already scolded the interpreter for failing to keep up with his remarks. Mr. Churkin often spoke so quickly that simultaneous translators had a hard time keeping up.
And yet, on Tuesday, while translating messages of condolences at the Security Council, the translator’s voice cracked constantly as she tried to hold back tears.
In private Mr. Churkin could be quite different from his public persona, which is what made him widely admired among his colleagues. He was willing to negotiate if he sensed an opening, fellow diplomats recalled.
Even after the public quarrels over the Syrian military assault on Aleppo, Mr. Churkin agreed to huddle in a room with his French and American counterparts. For three hours, they met, according to one diplomat. They went over each line, each phrase of a draft resolution aimed at extracting civilians from Aleppo safely, under the supervision of United Nations monitors. It was adopted unanimously.
While many ambassadors said nice things about Mr. Churkin on Tuesday, it was the Ethiopian envoy, Tekeda Alemu, who warned of the dangers of losing his spirit of cooperation.
“These are not normal times,” Mr. Alemu said. “This is a period when we need a person like Vitaly.”
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