The Ukraine Republic's ambassador to the United States will visit four state locales next week as a guest of Mississippi State University.
Ambassador Yuri M. Shcherbak and his wife will fly Thursday [Nov. 21] to Jackson, followed by trips the following day to Pascagoula and Gulfport. On Saturday [the 23rd], they will tour two major Mississippi State research facilities before being special guests of President and Mrs. Donald Zacharias at the Mississippi State-University of Arkansas football game.
Europe's second largest country--only slightly smaller than Texas--the Ukraine features fertile plains and a population of nearly 52 million located between Poland and Russia. Once part of the former Soviet Union, it now is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
"We are hopeful that Ambassador Shcherbak's visit will lead to close cooperation between Mississippi and the Ukraine, as well as between our university and one in his country," said Janos Radvanyi. Holder of Mississippi State's Chair for International Security and Strategic Studies, Radvanyi is coordinating Shcherbak's trip to the state.
Ambassador to the U.S. since 1994, Shcherbak is, by training, a physician who holds two doctorates in epidemiology. He also is a novelist and author of 20 books of poetry, prose, plays, and essays. An eyewitness to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, he wrote a major expose` on the environmental tragedy that was extensively published outside the Soviet Union prior to its breakup in the early 1990s.
Radvanyi said the diplomat's Jackson visit includes a late morning meeting [on the 21st] with House Speaker Tim Ford (D-Tupelo) and a noon luncheon sponsored by the state Department of Economic and Community Development. That night, the ambassador will speak to the Jackson Executive Lecture Forum.
On the Gulf Coast, the Shcherbaks will visit Ingalls Shipyards Friday morning [the 22nd]. He and his wife then will be guests at a Gulfport luncheon sponsored by Hancock Bank board chairman Leo W. Seal Jr. A tour of Gulfport will follow.
At Mississippi State, his Saturday itinerary includes tours and briefings at the Engineering Research Center and the Diagnostic Instrumentation and Analysis Laboratory.