International

Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, who represented his country through times of domestic tumult and rising tensions with the West, died on Monday morning while at work in Manhattan. He would have turned 65 on Tuesday.

The Russian government said he died suddenly but did not specify a cause. The New York City police said there were no indications of foul play.

“The outstanding Russian diplomat died in harness,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on Twitter. The United Nations observed a moment of silence on Monday.

His death comes at a critical juncture in Russian-American relations, amid allegations of Russian interference in the United States presidential election and President Trump’s praise for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin.

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     Relations between the two countries have deteriorated in recent years, and diplomats have been watching whether the dynamics will change under the Trump administration with the appointment of Nikki R. Haley to be the American United Nations envoy.

This month, she condemned what she called Russia’s “aggressive” actions in Ukraine. Mr. Churkin, on the same day, lauded her track record in politics. She was governor of South Carolina when Mr. Trump appointed her.

“I never underestimate my colleagues,” Mr. Churkin told reporters before posting on Twitter a picture of their first private meeting.

Mr. Churkin had been unusually absent during several Security Council meetings recently, but this month he brushed off reporters’ questions about his health. The deputy Russian ambassador, Petr Iliichev, said in brief remarks at a United Nations meeting on Monday that Mr. Churkin had been in the office “until the final moments.”

A Fire Department official said a 911 call had reported a cardiac arrest at the Russian mission on East 67th Street in Manhattan. Police officers from the 19th Precinct station house, across the street, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The medical examiner’s office said an autopsy would be conducted on Tuesday.

A police official said Mr. Churkin had a history of medical problems, including leukemia and heart ailments. He had kept them private among his diplomatic colleagues.

Mr. Churkin, a former child actor who had starred in three films, two of them biopics about Lenin, was widely considered a masterly diplomat. He could be caustic and wry in equal measure, especially in exchanges with his American counterparts. Once, after Samantha Power, a United Nations ambassador in the Obama administration, scolded him for Russia’s actions in Aleppo, Syria — “Are you truly incapable of shame?” she said — he accused her of acting like Mother Teresa.

Mr. Churkin had been trained as a translator, and as an ambassador, he sometimes became visibly annoyed with United Nations interpreters who could not keep up with his rat-a-tat speaking style.Vitaly Ivanovich Churkin was born in Moscow on Feb. 21, 1952. He held a Ph.D. in history and was a graduate of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

He began his career in the Soviet era and quickly rose through his country’s diplomatic corps as the Soviet Union was opening up under Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He was a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry from 1990 to 1992, represented his country in peace talks in the former Yugoslavia, and became ambassador to Belgium and Canada before taking on the United Nations post in 2006.

He was a forceful defender of the Kremlin under the leadership of Mr. Putin, who issued a statement of condolence on Monday. But Mr. Churkin was not always comfortable with Mr. Putin’s actions, some diplomats said privately.