Sergei Ivanov

Who is Sergei Ivanov?

Sergei Borisovich Ivanov is a Russian senior official and statesman. He was Minister of Defence from March 2001 to February 2007, Deputy Prime Minister from November 2005 to February 2007, and the First Deputy Prime Minister from February 2007 to May 2008. Previously, as secretary of the Russian Security Council, Ivanov served as an adviser to President Boris Yeltsin and later President Vladimir Putin on matters of national security. After the election of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia, Ivanov was reappointed a deputy prime minister in Vladimir Putin's second government. In December 2011 he was appointed Chief of Staff Presidential Administration of Russia.

Before joining the federal administration in Moscow, Ivanov, a fluent speaker of English—served in the Soviet and later Russian foreign intelligence service as a specialist in law and foreign languages, both at home and abroad from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. In 1975, Ivanov graduated from the Department of Philology at Leningrad State University, where he studied English and Swedish, and later completed postgraduate studies in counterintelligence and law in Minsk.