The first foreign minister of independent Ukraine Anatoliy Zlenko has died at the age of 83, said ex-deputy foreign minister of Ukraine, ex-permanent representative of Ukraine to the EU Kostiantyn Yeliseyev.
“With inexpressible pain I received the tragic news that the first head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of independent Ukraine, my teacher and diplomatic father Anatoliy Maksymovych Zlenko has passed away! Everything that I have achieved in diplomacy is thanks to his school of diplomacy. Sincere condolences to the Zlenko family. Eternal memory!” Yeliseyev wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Zlenko was in charge of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in 1991-1994 and 2000-2003, and in 1994-1997 he served as the Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN.
He began his career as a diplomat in 1967, working in the structures of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian USSR, then in the UNESCO Secretariat in Paris. In 1983-1987 he was the Permanent Representative of the Ukrainian USSR to UNESCO, in 1997-2000 – the Permanent Representative of the already independent Ukraine at UNESCO, combining this position with the mission of the post of Ukraine in France and Portugal. In 2004-2005, he represented Ukraine in the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Since September 2010, Zlenko has been Deputy President of the Kyiv Slavic University and headed the Institute of Slavic Studies and International Relations at the university.
