24 January 2019
January 24th, the Ambassador of Sri Lanka to Russia, Dayan Jayatilleka came to MGIMO, where he was greeted by the University’s Rector Anatoly Torkunov, the Vice-Rector for Graduate and International Programs Andrey Baykov, and the Head of the Department of Oriental Studies, Dmitry Streltsov.
The Rector spoke about MGIMO’s approach to regional studies and its long-running tradition of teaching foreign languages. Sinhalese was taught at the Department of Indo-Iranian and African languages from 1963 to 1995, and today students can learn Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Persian, Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Amharic, Swahili and Afrikaans. Anatoly Torkunov also remarked that the current Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov studied Sinhala at MGIMO and began his career in Sri Lanka as Attache to the Soviet Embassy (1972-1976).
Dayan Jayatilleka expressed the desire to develop academic cooperation between his country and MGIMO, noting how famous the University is for training a myriad of famous diplomats, academics and politicians. The Ambassador also spoke of his main research interests, which range from combating terrorism and extremism to regional and global policymaking.
Anatoly Torkunov presented to the guest the main schools and research priorities of MGIMO University. The Rector also spoke about the book recently published by MGIMO Professor Vladimir Pechatnov and David Reynolds from Cambridge University «The Kremlin Letters: Stalin’s Wartime Correspondence with Churchill and Roosevelt». Dayan Jayatilleka exhibited his interest in interacting with Vladimir Pechatnov and teaching at MGIMO.
— See the MGIMO web-site for russian version
