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Contact: Sammy McDavid

STARKVILLE, Miss.—The top diplomat of a major Eastern European nation visits the Magnolia State next week as a guest of çÛÁ¦ÊÓƵ.

Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., will be on the university campus Wednesday [Aug. 31] as inaugural speaker for the MSU International Institute’s 2016-17 MSU Global Engagement Lecture Series. Open to all, his address begins at 2 p.m. in the Bost Extension North auditorium.

Chaly assumed his current post in Washington, D.C. last July. In the mid-week campus presentation, he will discuss current challenges to international security and how they are affecting political and economic stabilities.

Prior to that, he and David Shaw, MSU vice president for research and economic development, will spend much of the morning touring high-technology facilities in the nearby Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park.

Thursday [Sept. 1], Chaly will be in Jackson for morning meetings with Gov. Phil Bryant and officials of the Mississippi Development Authority. At 11:45 a.m., he will speak on the same topic at the Executive Lecture Forum at Jackson’s Fairview Inn. A long-running component of MSU’s Janos Radvanyi Chair in International Security Studies, that program is not a public event.

Richard H. Nader, the International Institute’s new executive director, will accompany Chaly and Shaw both on campus and in the state capital.

Chaly, who holds degrees in international law and history, entered public service in the mid-1990s with successive appointments to Ukraine’s Assistants’ Group to the President and the National Security and Defense Council.

In 2010, while serving as deputy minister for foreign affairs, he resigned in protest against foreign and security policies being pursued by pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych. Upon leaving government, he worked as a private foreign relations adviser and member of a Ukrainian think tank, where he specialized in foreign policy, international law and security.

After the unpopular Yanukovych was ousted by the Ukrainian parliament in 2014 and fled to neighboring Russia, Chaly went to work on the ultimately successful presidential campaign of Petro Proroshenko. He returned to government service after the election. For more, see .

In addition to Russia, Ukraine—a nation of more than 233,000 square miles and 44 million citizens—is bordered by Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova, as well as the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. The government continues to deal with Russia’s 2014 invasion and annexation of its Crimean Peninsula—a strategic land mass directly accessible to both seas. Russia’s action has received international condemnation.

For additional information on the ambassador’s visit, contact Tan Tsai at 662-648-8436 or tsai@international.msstate.edu.

The Radvanyi Chair, sponsor of the Jackson event, is a campus memorial to the legendary history professor and diplomat that established and led MSU’s international studies program. The popular Executive Lecture Forum is a key element of its statewide outreach effort.

Radvanyi died in January at age 93. For more information, see .

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at .