Melinda Simmons, the British ambassador to Ukraine, has been winning plaudits for her decision to stay in post in Kyiv, working with a much-reduced staff to help UK citizens out of the country and to manage the steady flow of British dignitaries still flying to the country to show their solidarity.
Given the clarity, frequency and urgency of the British intelligence warnings of an imminent Russian invasion, including the possibility of airstrikes, it is surprising that she has until now insisted she remain in situ alongside a core team.
Her decision to stay put, along with most EU embassies, will be popular with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He is deeply unhappy that some western embassies – including the US, Canada and Australia – decided to move from Kyiv to Lviv or other cities in the west of the country. At a joint briefing on Monday Zelinskiy said he was determined to prevent an exodus of his political and business class, and questioned their logic. “There is no western Ukraine,” he said. “There is Ukraine; it is integral. Because if, God forbid, something happens, it will be everywhere.”
Simmons’s decision to stay may also be an implicit admission that the Foreign Office did not cover itself in glory in its handling of the fall of Kabul.
It might be thought that the Conservative press would treat her decision to stay put as a sign of the sangfroid on which the British diplomatic class like to pride themselves. But Douglas Murray, associate editor of the Spectator, took umbrage at her admissions that she sometimes needed to take walks to relieve herself of stress. “When exactly did Simmons-like behaviour become our national character? When did me-time and self-esteem replace stoicism? People used to talk of drawing on reserves in a crisis, not least because it gave confidence to our friends and allies as well as to ourselves. Clearly that isn’t the case now.”
Those who know her say she is regarded as a highly focussed humanitarian, and part of a new generation of British female ambassadors.
Born in the East End of London to Jewish parents, her family is from Poland on her father’s side, but her mother’s side is both Lithuanian and Ukrainian. Fluent in German and French, she came into the diplomatic network in 2003 via the Department for International Development (DfID) relatively late – 10 years after university, and after spending time in advertising and marketing, which she quit in disillusionment, taking a 50% pay cut to work for a peace-building NGO. Her husband was a journalist specialising in Africa. Her DfID career had a heavy Africa focus and she specialised in conflict resolution and prevention. Her move to the Foreign Office in 2013, and to the National Security Secretariat, meant a drift from soft to harder power. In 2018 she started language training in preparation for taking up her post in Kyiv in 2019. For the de-stressing reviled by the Spectator she tries baking and boxing.
Inside the Foreign Office she has tried to be a trailblazer, but admits it can be hard, once saying: “I think it’s really difficult to build the courage to speak up for yourself. Often for women, that’s just a step too far out of your comfort zone, plus there’s a real ‘why bother’ button that switches on in your head. Giving yourself permission to be heard is hugely empowering.” She awards herself one specialist skill – the ability to pick up the phone to anyone, no matter how senior, to get her point across.
Apart from shepherding British citizens on to commercial flights or over the border into Poland, her key task is to manage the sometimes fractious relations between the Ukrainian government and Britain. There is for instance great resentment in Ukraine about the west’s dire warnings of a Russian invasion, warnings that the UK has been at the forefront of.
She has also not been afraid to sound the alarm bells over any backsliding in Ukraine’s fight against corruption.
She recently told one Ukrainian interviewer: “When Brits think about Ukraine, by large they think about corruption and they think about war.” She said pretty pictures of the Carpathian mountains or Odessa will not shift that narrative. By contrast, “positive stories about progress in tackling corruption and positive stories about Ukraine growing in strength as a confident democracy, these are the things that will alter the perceptions of Brits”.
