Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Valerii Chaly, now heading foreign affairs department in that office, will become the new ambassador of Ukraine to the US. The Day has had this news confirmed by our sources in the diplomatic services of Ukraine and the US. The Presidential Administration initiated the appointment procedure for Chaly late last fall, and the presidential decree on his appointment as the ambassador of Ukraine to the US is expected within days.
The current head of our diplomatic mission in Washington is Oleksandr Motsyk, a career diplomat who was appointed to this position in 2010. Some people accused him of excessive loyalty to the Viktor Yanukovych regime. However, he was not replaced either immediately after the change of government in Ukraine or after Petro Poroshenko’s election to the presidency.
Chaly himself famously explained Ukraine’s failure to appoint new ambassadors to some countries by President Poroshenko’s high requirements for prospective officeholders. In a recent interview with LigaBusinessInform, Chaly commented on the appointment of key ambassadors: “Finding a true professional for each and every country is a hard job, especially with that department’s budget cut. Serving as an ambassador has ceased to be an easy job and turned into one full of very hard work.”
Earlier, Ambassador at Large of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba confirmed this position in an interview for The Day, adding: “We are investing a lot in training diplomats, especially those who will go on missions abroad and deal with the media. We are talking to them, explaining on what they are to focus their attention, holding trainings for them. We will gradually improve the situation in this way. The modern diplomat should have two basic skill sets, being both negotiator and communicator. The negotiating skills are needed for working with fellow diplomats, while communicating is necessary to explain to external, non-diplomatic audiences what is happening. A person displaying these two qualities is a true 21st-century diplomat. By the way, our newly-appointed ambassadors to Austria, Germany, France, and South Africa display both these qualities.”
Yurii SHCHERBAK, former Ambassador of Ukraine to the US and Canada:
“I am very supportive of Valerii Chaly, have known him for a long time and respect him as a very experienced and wise diplomat, a principled man who found an inner strength to resign from the Yanukovych-era MFA in protest against Yanukovych’s foreign policy. I welcome his appointment as the ambassador to the US and see him as an extremely suitable figure to represent our country in the US at this crucial juncture of our history, especially when we are dealing with extremely serious issues of weapons shipments and other kinds of American aid. Chaly has been the right hand man of President Poroshenko, participating in all top-level meetings and having in-depth knowledge of many issues in our international relations. He enjoys the trust of our foreign partners, and I think he is a suitable figure, able to meet challenges facing Ukraine now and work out solutions to issues in our relations with the US. I understand how hard this job will be for Chaly, and would like to just wish him great success. I have no doubt that he is a deserving and highly professional candidate for this post.”
John HERBST, former US Ambassador to Ukraine and a member of the Atlantic Council, Washington:
“Valerii is a strong professional who will do a terrific job as Ukraine’s Ambassador to Washington, IF HE IS NOMINATED. He is smart, articulate, close to President Poroshenko and has an informal style that is very congenial to Americans. He will establish himself as a strong, effective interlocutor in Washington and a worthy successor to the talented Oleksandr Motsyk.”
“Talking about immediate challenges that will face Chaly in this position, and given the problems that the previous ambassador faced, including in his relationship with the local Ukrainian community, I think that Chaly will need to immediately upgrade all tools at the disposal of ambassador, as numerous as they are, concerning various fields, and I am sure he will succeed in doing that. It will enable him to maximize trust levels in his relations with US government institutions, including the White House, the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and other agencies. I mean, much depends on the ambassador’s personal standing. If the ambassador is distrusted by the host nation’s authorities, they will not have much success. In this case, I believe that Chaly will enjoy the US authorities’ trust and achieve a lot, but, of course, his first days in the post will prove to be extremely difficult for him. He should immediately review the entire spectrum of the Ukrainian-American relations and restore many lost positions.”
