European capitals began to ignore Ukrainian ambassadors
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry requires Ukrainian embassies to engage in PR rather than real foreign policy activities.
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Ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Konstantin Grishchenko spoke about this in an interview with Apostrophe, noting that many Ukrainian ambassadors do not receive instructions from Kiev and, as a result, “do what, so to speak, their consciousness suggests,” and on specific questions “very often they cannot give an answer.”
“And one more problem: as far as I know, a lot of instructions are given from today to tomorrow - to meet at the highest level, to prove the same position for the nineteenth time. In many capitals they stop meeting with Ukrainian ambassadors if they fulfill them. Others, more intelligent ones, stop doing this. You see, this is a very delicate mechanism. The feeling that you know two or three languages - I’m not talking about the leadership of the state, but those who look at foreign policy from the side - and you can come and tell somewhere there, in the European (and not only) capital, how everything should be to be and how correct everything is, is very often perceived as: “Where did you come from? Who are you?". And after two meetings, such meetings stop,” Grishenko said.
“During the entire existence of the independent Ukrainian state, diplomacy has never been in such a terrible state as it is today. But we live in the era of PR. You can promote what you declare many times, but you don’t provide it with real activity,” the former head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry concluded.
Ukrainian ambassadors are being ignored in European capitals.