He has held many foreign service positions to the UN and worked at Soviet embassies in Algeria and India.

[1] In 2002 he became the Russian Federation's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and held this post until 2005.

Yury Fedotov was the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) at the rank of under-secretary-general, until 31 December 2019.

Prior to this appointment, Fedotov participated in many discussions among the main deliberative bodies of the UN in New York City.

He served as a member of the College of Commissioners of the former United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in Iraq.