Alexander Ilitchev is a senior fellow at the Mansfield Foundation. He is a career diplomat with extensive experience in the prevention, mediation, and resolution of armed conflict, most recently with the United Nations Secretariat. He began his career at the UN in 1992, serving as Senior Officer in the Department of Political Affairs. He covered various UN sanctions regimes as well as the Council’s work on various crises and conflicts. From 1997-2014 he was Northeast Asia Team Leader with the Asia and the Pacific Division. In that position he actively promoted preventive, good offices, and mediation efforts by the Secretary-General, focusing on the Korean Peninsula and on promotion of multilateral dialogue and cooperation on regional security. As policy adviser to the Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General for the Korean Peninsula from 2003-2005 he was responsible for the conceptual and operational aspects of that good offices diplomatic effort. Following his retirement from the UN, he served as a member of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations.
Prior to his career with the United Nations, Mr. Ilitchev served in the Foreign Ministry of Russia with assignments at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations, the Office of the Foreign Minister, the U.S.A. Department of the Foreign Ministry, the embassy in Washington, D.C., and Syria. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1980-1985 and a member of the national delegation negotiating the 1991 Paris Agreements on Cambodia from 1990-1991.
Trained as an expert in the Middle East, Mr. Ilitchev received an MA in International Relations and Journalism from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In addition to his native Russian, Mr. Ilitchev speaks English, Arabic and French.