CURRENT CHALLENGES OF UKRAINE’S PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

The lack of a long-term perspective and strategy is one of the most important challenges for Ukraine’s public diplomacy at the current stage, since the strategy serves as a central axis for the formation and coordination of the activities of public diplomacy actors. Cultural and information centers at the Ukrainian embassies overseas should develop a roadmap of their activities – an annual plan for public diplomacy. Given the differing cooperation levels with each separate country of accreditation, the plan requires careful consideration of all objective factors to be useful while solving specific long-term tasks. The practice of putting an annual plan of public diplomacy has proven to be highly effective because the long-term strategy enables diplomats to optimize resources for the organizational preparation of complex projects. Shaping the image of the state in the modern age of globalization and digital domination is no longer prerogative for politicians, since the number of agents of influence are constantly increasing due to private actors, in particular, opinion leaders, influencers, etc. The general course of Ukraine’s public diplomacy is still being developed. Public diplomacy of Ukraine received the boost only in 2014, after the military intervention of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. Over the last 5 years, the focus of Ukraine's public diplomacy evolved from defending Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity into the proactive strategic planning mechanism. Despite the short history of its existence, modern Ukraine’s public diplomacy as an element of foreign policy has already demonstrated significant outcomes. To begin with, the government has launched the process of institutionalization of public diplomacy, developed common roadmaps for its implementation, and initiated the destruction of the outdated USSR norms of cultural cooperation. Besides, an attempt was made to unite the efforts of state and private actors to improve the effectiveness of public diplomacy policy. One of the major results of public diplomacy modernization has broadened the spectrum of its tools by social networks, expert diplomacy, etc. However, the lack of a specialized coordination structure, constant under-staffing, unused potential of available resources as well as budgeting problems have remained among significant challenges at the current stage of development of Ukraine’s public diplomacy. Ukrainian researcher O. Detsyk has claimed that competences and functions of state authorities that are in charge of public diplomacy are not fully differentiated and 48  Specialized and multidisciplinary scientific researches  Volume 5