# List of ambassadors of Russia to Finland

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to Finland is the official representative of the President and the Government of the Russian Federation to the President and the Government of Finland.
The ambassador and his staff work at large in the Embassy of Russia in Helsinki. There is a consulate general in Turku, and consuls in Mariehamn and Kuusamo. Pavel Kuznetsov was appointed Russian Ambassador to Finland on 14 August 2017.

## History of diplomatic relations

The territory now making up present-day Finland was contested between Russians and Swedes for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, until the Finnish War of 1808-1809 established the Grand Duchy of Finland as an autonomous part of the Russian Empire. Finland had her own parliament, the Diet, minted her own currency, and shared a customs border with Russia. The Finnish language was given official status alongside Russian and Swedish.
Finland declared independence on 6 December 1917, after the Russian Revolution that year, a decision which was ratified by the Russian government on 31 December 1917. The declaration soon sparked a civil war between White and Red factions. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) appointed representatives to the Red faction during the war, until their defeat. Relations were then established between the Finnish government and the RSFSR at the level of missions on 31 December 1920. With the formal establishment of the Soviet Union, diplomatic relations were maintained between the USSR and Finland from 23 July 1923 onwards.
Diplomatic relations between the two states were broken off several times during the twentieth century. The first came on 29 November 1939 with the outbreak of the Winter War between the USSR and Finland. With the negotiated conclusion to the war, diplomatic relations resumed on 12 March 1940. Relations were once more interrupted on 22 June 1941, with the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union and Finland's participation on the Eastern Front against Soviet forces as part of the Continuation War. With the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War, diplomatic relations were once more reestablished on 6 August 1945, and on 18 July 1954 the mission was upgraded to the level of an embassy. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Finland recognized the Russia Federation as its successor state on 30 December 1991, and ambassadors have continued to be exchanged between the two countries.

## List of representatives (1917 – present)
### Representatives of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to Finland (1917 – 1923)

| Name | Title | Appointment | Termination | Notes |
| Ivar Smilga | Representative | 16 February 1918 | 1918 | To the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic only |
| Konstantin Kovanko [fi] | Representative | 9 April 1918 | 23 May 1918 | Not recognised by the Finnish government |
| Jan Berzin | Plenipotentiary | 16 February 1921 | 24 June 1921 | |
| Aleksey Chernykh [ru] | Plenipotentiary | 31 July 1921 | 23 July 1923 | |

### Representatives of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to Finland (1923 – 1991)

| Name | Title | Appointment | Termination |
| Aleksey Chernykh [ru] | Plenipotentiary | 23 July 1923 | 9 July 1925 |
| Ivan Lorents | Plenipotentiary | 9 July 1925 | 6 July 1927 |
| Sergey Aleksandrovsky [ru] | Plenipotentiary | 6 July 1927 | 16 May 1929 |
| Ivan Maisky | Plenipotentiary | 16 May 1929 | 27 September 1932 |
| Boris Shtein | Plenipotentiary | 6 January 1933 | 25 November 1934 |
| Eric Assmus | Plenipotentiary | 23 January 1935 | 20 August 1937 |
| Vladimir Derevyansky [ru] | Plenipotentiary | 27 January 1938 | 29 November 1939 |
| Winter War - Diplomatic relations interrupted (1939 - 1940) |||||
| Ivan Zotov [ru] | Plenipotentiary | 6 April 1940 | 6 April 1941 |
| Pavel Orlov [ru] | Plenipotentiary Envoy after 9 May 1941 | 11 April 1941 | 22 June 1941 |
| Continuation War - Diplomatic relations interrupted (1941 - 1945) |||||
| Pavel Orlov [ru] | Envoy | 18 August 1945 | 14 August 1946 |
| Aleksandr Abramov [ru] | Envoy | 14 August 1946 | 13 January 1948 |
| Grigory Savonenkov [ru] | Envoy | 13 January 1948 | 8 April 1951 |
| Viktor Lebedev [ru] | Envoy Ambassador after 5 August 1954 | 8 April 1951 | 10 October 1958 |
| Night Frost Crisis - Diplomatic relations interrupted (1958 - 1959) |||||
| Aleksey Zakharov [ru] | Ambassador | 4 February 1959 | 23 January 1965 |
| Andrey Kovalyov [ru] | Ambassador | 23 January 1965 | 25 June 1970 |
| Aleksey Belyakov | Ambassador | 25 June 1970 | 16 May 1971 |
| Viktor Maltsev [ru] | Ambassador | 16 May 1971 | 27 December 1973 |
| Vladimir Stepanov | Ambassador | 27 December 1973 | 11 June 1979 |
| Vladimir Sobolev | Ambassador | 11 June 1979 | 17 June 1988 |
| Boris Aristov | Ambassador | 17 June 1988 | 25 December 1991 |

### Representatives of the Russian Federation to Finland (1991 – present)

| Name | Title | Appointment | Termination |
| Boris Aristov | Ambassador | 25 December 1991 | 10 February 1992 |
| Yuri Deryabin [ru] | Ambassador | 10 February 1992 | 2 November 1996 |
| Ivan Aboimov | Ambassador | 2 November 1996 | 6 August 1999 |
| Aleksandr Patsev [ru] | Ambassador | 25 August 1999 | 21 April 2003 |
| Vladimir Grinin | Ambassador | 21 April 2003 | 21 April 2006 |
| Alexander Rumyantsev | Ambassador | 21 April 2006 | 14 August 2017 |
| Pavel Kuznetsov | Ambassador | 14 August 2017 | |