The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom announce the successful completion of a joint project aimed at strengthening the communication capacities of Ukraine’s diplomatic service. The FCO funded project lasted from November 2014 until April 2015 and included three stages.

At the first stage, a “buddying model” was introduced. Press-officers of British Embassies in eight foreign countries shared their experience in communications with their counterparts in respective Ukrainian Embassies.

The second stage of the project took place in March 2015 in the form of a week-long training session for ten Ukrainian junior and middle-ranked diplomats in London. Diplomats received training from FCO coaches who regularly tutor UK diplomats to communicate effectively and mount information campaigns.

The third stage lasted from 30 March until 3 April. The Minister, Deputy Ministers and ten Ukrainian Ambassadors and Charge d’Affaires received media training from Robert Taylor, an experienced trainer of UK Ambassadors. Taking this opportunity, the MFA also invited other experts in communications to hold sessions in the margins of the training. The Ministry thanks Maksym Savanevsky (Ukraine Crisis Media Center) for speaking on the role of social media and Whit Mason (Mason Communications) for a discussion on communication strategies.

"We are deeply grateful to our British colleagues for their sincere commitment to helping Ukraine. FCO shared its best experience with us making valuable contribution to building up our communication capacities. We will continue working closely together to promote our common values and counter Russian propaganda on the international level. MFA remains devoted to holding more communication trainings for our diplomats with special focus on Ambassadors of Ukraine", Dmytro Kuleba, Ambassador-at-Large from Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said on the occasion of the completion of the project.