Sergey Sazonov

Russian Empire state institutions Imperial establishment and White movement 1860–1927 → Died in exile

Russian foreign minister during the Balkan Wars and the July Crisis who later served as Kolchak's foreign minister

Born into the minor Russian nobility, he graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, served at the London embassy and headed the mission to the Vatican; helped by his brother-in-law Stolypin, he became assistant foreign minister in 1909 and foreign minister in November 1910. He concluded the Potsdam Agreement with Germany in 1911 and a secret convention with Japan on Inner Mongolia in 1912. On the eve of the Second Balkan War he told the Bulgarian prime minister Danev to expect nothing from Russia. In 1914 he warned Austria-Hungary that Russia would defend Serbia, and in 1915 obtained Allied consent to a post-war Russian occupation of Constantinople and the Straits. Dismissed in July 1916 after proposing autonomy for Poland, he opposed Bolshevism, advised Denikin, was foreign minister in Kolchak's government, represented it at the Paris Peace Conference, and died in Nice in 1927.

Also known as: Sergei Sazonov