His Excellency Alexander Darchiev, Ambassador of Russia to Canada, visited Vancouver, BC

The recently appointed Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Canada, H.E. Alexander Darchiev visited in Vancouver, BC on May 23-27, 2015 by the invitation of the local CERBA-Vancouver Board of Directors.

The Ambassador was accompanied by the Counselor on Economic Relations, Sergey Strokov and the 1st Secretary, Artem Tevanyan.

This was the first visit of the Russian delegation of such level in BC since the Vancouver Olympics in February, 2010.

The Ambassador attended an opening ceremony of the monument devoted to the veterans of the 2nd World War that took place  at the Monastery of All Saints in North America on May 24th followed by a meeting with the Vancouver Russian community to discuss their needs and answer the questions. 

The business program organized by CERBA included meetings with the number of BC-based companies involved into the business in the Russian Federation such as Global Cobalt Corp., URTHECAST, Arktos Development and KTC Panel Board. The Ambassador participated as the honorable guest at the CERBA-Vancouver Annual General Meeting on May 26, where he spoke about the current economic situation in Russia and projections for its future development and answered questions at the interactive discussion with the audience. The meeting was attended by over 30 CERBA members and associates and chaired by the Head of the CERBA-Vancouver Board, President of Global Cobalt Corp., Erin Chutter and Ex-Ambassador of Canada to the Russian Federation, H.E. John Sloan.  

In the due course of meetings and discussions there was highlighted a strong potential in further development of cooperation between British Columbia and the Russian Far East where a number of large infrastructure projects funded from local and federal budget make good opportunities for the Canadian companies to offer their products and expertise. Industrial sectors like mining, LNG, innovation technologies, forestry and wood processing, construction and infrastructure, aquaculture and fisheries – have been identified as the most attractive areas of collaboration. A number of events projected by the CERBA-Vancouver Chapter in these sectors for the incoming new business year were pointed for attending by the Russian businesses.

The Ambassador and his team specifically marked out the beauty of Vancouver and the BC region and expressed preparedness to visit it more often with an appropriate occasion. 

The original press release was issued on May 28, 2015 on the website of CERBA - Canada Eurasia Russia Business Association: http://www.cerbanet.org/public/index.php?page_id=news_e&news_id=392