[citation needed] He encouraged his government to declare war on Turkey in 1877, and after the decisive Russian victory he negotiated the Treaty of San Stefano in 1878.

Ignatyev's diplomatic career began at the Congress of Paris in 1856, after the Crimean War, where he participated in the negotiations regarding the demarcation of the Russo-Ottoman frontier on the lower Danube.

According to the memoirs "Fifty Years of Service" written by his nephew Alexei Alexeyevich Count Ignatiev, Nikolay Ignatyev "inadvertently" pocketed a newly developed cartridge while inspecting the ordnance works of the British Army.

The khan of Khiva laid a plan for detaining him as a hostage, but he eluded the danger and returned safely, after concluding a treaty of friendship with the emir of Bukhara.

When the Chinese government was terrified by the advance of the Anglo-French expedition of 1860 and the burning of the Old Summer Palace in the Second Opium War, he worked on their fears so dexterously that, in the Convention of Peking, he obtained for Russia Outer Manchuria – not only the left bank of the Amur river, the original object of the mission, but also a large extent of territory and seacoast south of that river that would become the Russian "Maritime Province," the region of Primorsky Krai.

His restless activity in this field, mostly of a semiofficial and secret character, culminated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, at the close of which he negotiated with the Ottoman plenipotentiaries the Treaty of San Stefano.

[3] As the war which he had done so much to bring about did not eventually secure for Russia advantages commensurate with the sacrifices involved, he fell into disfavour with Alexander II in part due to efforts of Count Pyotr Shuvalov, and retired from active service.

Shortly after the accession of Alexander III in 1881, he was appointed Minister of the Interior on the understanding that he would carry out a nationalist, reactionary policy.

"[4] After a period of intense, violent, destructive antisemitic rioting, known as pogroms, which some accused Ignatyev of fomenting, he issued the infamous "May Laws" in May 1882.

Explanations include that he was suspected of dishonesty or extortion, or that the Tsar feared he intended to introduce constitutional government by reviving the Zemsky Sobor (parliament).

Count Nikolay Ignatiev was married to Yekaterina Leonidovna Galitzina (1842-1917), daughter of Prince Leonid Mikhailovich Galitzine and Anna Matveyevna Tolstaïa.