Sazonov, Sergey

Sergei Dmitriyevich Sazonov GCB was a Russian statesman and diplomat who served as the foreign minister of Russia from November 1910 to July 1916. The degree of his involvement in the events leading up to the outbreak of World War I is a matter of keen debate, with some historians putting the blame for an early and provocative mobilization squarely on Sazonov's shoulders, and others maintaining that his chief preoccupation was "to reduce the temperature of international relations, especially in the Balkans".