After four tumultuous and challenging years, Dame Melinda Simmons’ term as the British ambassador to Ukraine is coming to an end. Her successor Martin Harris will be arriving in September. Since Simmons, a career diplomat, arrived in Kyiv in September 2019, she has worked through the coronavirus outbreak, a change

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The Kyiv Independent: How has the perception of Ukraine in the eyes of British citizens changed after the start of the full-scale invasion?

Dame Melinda Simmons: I think the Brits know so much more now about Ukrainians, frankly how utterly cool the country is, and even down to what kind of food you eat. Because, of course, so many people have taken in Ukrainians, and they’re learning to make syrnyky and it’s all fantastic.

But they aren’t the only people who are waking up to this understanding of Ukraine’s history, this sense of what Russia really is, this colonial fascist-leaning country. There is a dawning realization not just for the West, but for other countries who tended to see that as a geographically different part of history. This sense of Ukraine having been colonized under Soviet occupation – that is a narrative that is being understood by many other countries who have not been conventional partners of Ukraine but are now very interested in the nature of this invasion.