OPENING A NEW CHAPTER OF PARTNERSHIP AND UNDERSTANDING FOR KAZAKHSTAN

INTERVIEW: HIS EXCELLENCY MAGZHAN ILYASSOV, AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Diplomatic relations between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were established on 19 January 1992, with the Embassy opening in the UK in 1996. Thirty years on, relations continue to be as strong as ever. On 6 October 2022, Magzhan Ilyassov was appointed as the new Ambassador to the United Kingdom. His appointment, by President Tokayev, comes at a time when enhancing trade, economic and investment co-operation between the two countries could not be more important to both sides. OCA Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Nick Rowan, had the pleasure of discussing some of Ambassador Ilyassov’s priorities and experiences since arriving in the UK.

Ambassador Ilyassov has always known he wanted to be a diplomat. Born in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and having been schooled at one of the few Soviet and Kazakh universities that was intensively teaching the English language, a life of diplomacy was a natural path. Ilyassov worked his way up the diplomatic ladder, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promoted to several departments within the presidential administration for 19 years, before being appointed as ambassador of Kazakhstan to the Netherlands in 2016. During his time there he was also the Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which involved much multilateral diplomacy on very challenging chemical weapons cases, including the Skripal poisoning in the UK. In 2020, Mr Ilyassov was promoted to New York as Kazakhstan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, before he arrived in the UK in October 2022.

I wanted to start by understanding what drove Ilyassov to a career in diplomacy. He starts without hesitation, “I saw that Kazakhstan in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, became a truly independent country. Before then all real foreign politics and diplomacy was controlled by Moscow.There was no real foreign policy of the Republic of Kazakhstan whatsoever. I graduated from my high school in 1991, so attended the last school class of Soviet Union before it disintegrated. I saw this happening, and I said to myself, ‘Well, we have independence. We have sovereignty, we will exercise our own foreign policy.’”

Ilyassov’s arrival in the UK came during a year of huge global upheaval and uncertainty. It was a time where diplomacy was more important than ever. However, his arrival also came just a few weeks after the death of Her Majesty the Queen and that meant that he was one of the very first ambassadors to present their credentials to the new King Charles III. I was keen to hear more about his experience at Buckingham Palace.

Ilyassov’s eyes light up. “It was exciting, because not every day do you present credentials in a beautiful setting with its royal protocol. I was proud to wear national costume at the ceremony. We were properly briefed on what to do - how many steps to take, when to bow, and so on. When the doors opened, I saw His Majesty for the first time and proceeded with the presentation of my credentials. He was actually the least protocol driven person in the whole setting, because