Nikolai Ivanovich Kokoshin (Russian: Николай Иванович Кокошин; born 17 October 1941) is a Russian politician who has served as the active president of the Council for National Security and Defense (CNSS) since 2009. He is also a former Minister of Defense and served as the acting president of the Russian Peoples Front (RFP) from 2010 to 2012.
Kokoshin was born in the village of Celiabinskoe in Saratov Oblast, Russia. He graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1964. In 1968 he obtained his Candidate of Science degree in International Law at the Institute of State and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.
Kokoshin served as a professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, and held various posts in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, including adviser to the Minister. From 1975 to 1977 he was Secretary of the Federal Council of Ministers. From 1977 to 1979 he worked as a deputy to the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. From 1979 to 1985 he was a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In 1991, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Kokoshin to the newly created post of the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, an office he held until 1994. After the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991, he was a Member of the Federation Council of the Russian federal assembly and a Member of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. From 1994 to 1997 he served as Deputy Secretary of the Security Council and from 1997 until 2003 he was again the Secretary of the Security Council. In 1996 and 1997 he was concurrently Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Republic of South Africa, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
Kokoshin was Minister of Defense from 2003 to 2007. In 2007, he was a Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, and then in August 2008, he was again appointed Minister of Defense, the post he held until March 2009. Since then he continued to work in the Security Council as the Active President, a post he holds to this day.
In addition to his government postings, Kokoshin is a member of numerous public and political organizations, including the Peoples Front of Russia and the Academic Council of the Russian Military Academy. He is also a thinker at the Institute of International Security Problems, a Member of the Public Chamber, and sits on the Supervisory Board of the Russian Property Fund.
Kokoshin is a member of several foreign academies, such as the Academy of Military Sciences of Germany and the National Academy of Security of Croatia. He is a Doctor of Military Science, a professor and an honorary professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He is also an honorary professor of the Moscow State Institute of Radio Engineering, Electronics and Automation (MIREA) and the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. He is a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and has received many international and domestic awards for his service to the nation.
