3rd May 2011
How can the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, best ensure that it meets the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people? I’ve blogged before about the unfortunate propensity of members of the Rada to settle disputes by physical violence – inside the chamber – rather than by debate. When I noted recently with approval that there hadn’t […]
3rd May 2011
The importance the British Government attaches to enhancing relations with India was underlined in March when Lord Green visited the country, including Mumbai. Lord Green has just weeks ago taken on the position of Minister of Trade and Investment, and his first official overseas visit was to India. Lord Green is well known to many […]
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12th April 2011
I recently wrote about the centre of Kyiv turning British. So it’s good to find the centre of Oxford turning Ukrainian. The occasion is the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Programme Oxford Model Ukraine Conference “Ukraine’s Domestic and Foreign Affairs: Quo Vadis” (“where are you going”), held in St Anthony’s College and New College, Oxford from 6-8 April. […]
29th March 2011
Can you walk 110 kilometres in 24 hours? That’s the distance from the centre of Kyiv to the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone north of Kyiv. With the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster coming up at the end of April, a group of volunteers from the British and French embassies in Kyiv are […]
21st March 2011
59 years in jail, reduced to 35 years, for satire? It sounds like a bad joke. But this is the sentence handed down by the regime in Burma in 2008 to popular comedian Maung Thura, better known as Zarganar. And his case is a good example of why the international community continues to call on […]
12th March 2011
Guest blog by Svita Yavorska, EU Co-ordinator, British Embassy Kyiv It’s great to find the Ukrainian Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources full of people who care passionately about climate change. The occasion is a round table organised by the British Embassy in partnership with the State Environmental Investment Agency of Ukraine to highlight the […]
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11th March 2011
Anyone visiting Independence Square in the heart of Kyiv in the past few weeks will have seen the massive “British Business Days in Ukraine” banner stretched across the face of the Globus Shopping Centre. The British Business Days in Ukraine (BBDU) are nearly here – they run from 17-19 March. Some great British and Ukrainian […]
9th February 2011
On Friday the Embassy was packed with Mayors and Deputy Mayors from across the country, engaging with senior staff and managers from Tesco. It was a chance for this British-based company to thank them for all those two-way, mutually satisfactory arrangements that exist in many Hungarian towns and cities where there are Tesco stores. And […]
4th February 2011
Check out these terrific photographs. They are the winners and honourable mentions of a photo competition called “Save Energy! Stop Climate Change! run by the British Embassy in Kyiv between October and December 2010. The aim of the campaign, about which I blogged in November, is to show the benefits of energy-saving measures both for […]
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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 […]