Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna
Part of21st January 2011
In a recent blog on human rights in Ukraine I noted that the British embassy in Kyiv had supported projects to help a number of different constituent elements of the Ukrainian legal system including the Constitutional Court. So I was delighted to have a chance recently to visit the Constitutional Court, and to meet the […]
20th January 2011
A guest blog from John Foreman, Defence Attache, British Embassy 19 January is Epiphany, an ancient Christian feast day which, in the Orthodox tradition, celebrates the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. The people of Ukraine, as elsewhere in the region, celebrate this event by jumping into the cold waters […]
19th January 2011
Promoting British business in Ukraine is one of the top priorities of our embassy in Kyiv. We are regularly in contact with companies and government on every aspect of business activity, from advising companies who are considering starting up in Ukraine, through engaging with the government on specific issues, to lobbying on how to improve […]
17th January 2011
In a week where The Social Network, the film about the creation of the Facebook website, has been dominating the Golden Globe awards in the US, it’s great to see politicians uniting to reinforce the freedom of information in Ukraine. On 13 January the Rada adopted two important laws on access to public information. The […]
12th January 2011
In what world ranking of democracy does Ukraine score three of the top eight places? As part of its end-year summary of the events of 2010, the respected British newspaper The Guardian recently published a picture gallery entitled “The Year in Parliamentary Punch-Ups“. The piece features pictures from Italy, Turkey, Nigeria, Taiwan, Argentina and Ukraine. […]
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22nd December 2010
You’ve got to admire the Dutch secret service, the AIVD, for their low profile. In fact when I see references to them in a show by US artist Jill Magid at the Tate Modern in London I log onto Google when I get home to check they exist. Even the Wikipedia entry notes that “there is […]
17th December 2010
When the Lord Mayor of London visited Kyiv in September 2009 he drew attention to the immense expertise of British financial institutions in developing Public Private Partnership or PPP. This is an arrangement where a private organisation assumes the risk of financing and building anything from a bridge to a hospital on the basis of […]
16th December 2010
The UK and international press have reacted with intrigue to the suggestion that Chernobyl, site of the 1986 nuclear disaster, could be a new tourist hotspot. In fact as some reports have noted, it has been possible to visit the site, along with the nearby abandoned Soviet-era city of Pripyat, for several years. I visited […]
13th December 2010
It’s not often that we charge people to enter my house. But we make an exception when we host a charity reception in support of the Ukrainian charity EveryChild. Ukraine, like many other countries in Eastern Europe, continues to house large number of children in orphanages. EveryChild, which was set up as the result of […]
12th December 2010
The lofty, historic hall of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy is packed with journalists, TV cameras and microphones. The occasion is the prize-giving for the BBC Ukrainian Service Book of the Year Competition. The prize, worth #1,000, is in my pocket. Several of the five short-listed authors are present, one via Skype from Washington. Five distinguished […]