Today, the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Maria Zakharova, celebrates her 49th birthday.
The "right hand" of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was born on December 24, 1975 into a family of diplomats.
Her father, Vladimir Zakharov, moved the family to Beijing in 1981 when he was appointed to the Soviet embassy there. The family returned to Moscow in 1993, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Her mother, Irina Zakharova, is an art historian who worked at the Moscow Pushkin Museum.
In 1998 Maria Zakharova graduated from the Faculty of International Journalism of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, specializing in Orientalism. Her pre-graduate internship was conducted at the Russian Embassy in Beijing.
Since 2005, Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova has been the wife of Russian businessman, lawyer and politician Andrei Makarov. The couple got married on November 5 in New York, signing their marriage contract at the Russian Consulate.
Makarov was a deputy of the State Duma in the period 1993-1999, and since 2003. is a member of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.
The couple has one daughter, Marianna, born in 2010.
Zakharova is currently the director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry. She has been the ministry's spokesperson since 2015.
She holds the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences - the Russian equivalent of a doctorate.