"My successor, professional diplomat Alexander Udaltsov, who has extensive practical experience and is well familiar with the Baltic region, will not have an easy legacy to work with. I want to wish him all the success, including in the settlement of the 'complicated' issues in the Lithuanian-Russian relations," Chkhikvadze said in an interview to the Russian-language weekly Litovsky Kurier published in Lithuania.
Born in 1951, Udaltsov graduated form Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1973 and from the Foreign Ministry's diplomatic academy in 1985.
According to the information available on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website, Udaltsov started his diplomatic career in 1973. He headed the Russian Embassy in Latvia in 1996-2001, later headed the Foreign Ministry's Second European Department and was appointed as ambassador to Slovakia in 2005.
The website does not provide any information about Udaltsov's appointment to the embassy in Vilnius.
Chkhikvadze has been heading the Russian Embassy in Vilnius since May 2008.
