Robert Eksuzyan

I'm sorry to hear this [Obituary: Robert Eksuzyan]. I worked with Robert from 1989 to 1995 and appreciated his sense of humour as well as his memory, knowledge and judgment.

“But this is very important,” he’d say, pointing out a development I’d overlooked or wrongly dismissed as irrelevant. As John [Morrison] said, his skills with a telephone were remarkable. In a previous life he must have been a safe breaker. At a time when calls from foreign news outlets tended to prompt officials to respond with a “No” or “Go away and don’t contact us again”, Robert would hector, flatter and cajole the person on the other end into giving away far more than they intended or realised. This skill proved to be particularly valuable in the last few years of the Soviet Union, when the heavily overworked six-person Moscow bureau had to cover the rise of nationalist movements in the Baltics and increasingly brutal ethnic tensions in the Caucasus. Later on this had a personal impact on Robert, who would fret about the damage done to his beloved Gagra during the Abkhaz war. Yet he was rarely subdued for long and his irrepressible sense of humour is just one of the reasons why it was a privilege to work with him. ■