On February 10 – the Diplomatic Workers’ Day – the 22nd Winter Diplomatic Games were held at the Moscow Country Club, an affiliate of GlavUpDK under the MFA of Russia. 

The event was opened by Vyacheslav Fatin, Acting Head of GlavUpDK, who read out greetings from Sergey Lavrov, Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation.

“Organized under the auspices of GlavUpDK, the competition annually gathers teams of diplomatic missions under the national flags of their states. We see an important uniting role of sports, which is intended to serve the ideals of peace and friendship between peoples,” the Minister said in his statement.

The opening ceremony was also attended by Svetlana Zhurova, First Deputy Chairwoman of the Committee on International Affairs with the State Duma of the Russian Federation, an Olympic champion, President of the Russian Union of Athletes, 3-time Olympic champion Galina Gorokhova, and Deputy Director General of the World Youth Festival Directorate Daniil Bisslinger.

Teams of various countries’ diplomatic missions will compete in Nordic skiing, table tennis, Russian pool and futsal. Employees of the embassies of Angola, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Belarus, Brunei, Burundi, Venezuela, Zambia, India, Iraq, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Cuba, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Senegal, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Chad, Ecuador and South Ossetia came to the sports grounds of the Moscow Country Club. The following departments have also sent their teams: The Secretariat of the Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, the Eurasian Economic Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, MGIMO, TASS Russian News Agency and GlavUpDK under the MFA of Russia.

Traditionally, the most entertaining was the soccer championship, where 16 teams took part. The gold medal was taken by the Moscow Country Club team, the silver medal went to Belarus, and the bronze medals were shared by the teams of the embassies of Angola and Uzbekistan.

The most awarded athletes were representatives of the embassy of North Korea, who won the silver and the bronze in the men’s table tennis competition, and the gold and the silver in the women’s competition; Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic Shin Hong Chol won a silver medal in the billiards competition.

The team of TASS Russian News Agency, the only mass media that took part in the sports festival, was not excluded from the awards. Anton Vilchinsky won a gold medal in the table tennis competition.

Legendary Russian athletes and professional umpires were on the panel of judges: Galina Gorokhova, Lyudmila Titova, Nikolay Zimyatov, Aleksandr Zavyalov.

On the eve of the World Youth Festival and a large-scale sports event at the junction of sports, science and technology, the Games of the Future, a special program was waiting for the participants and the guests of the event. The Moscow Country Club had a ground for outdoor activities with winter entertainment and attractions for the whole family.

A themed program was also prepared by the participants of the Food Map of Russia under the guidance of Ekaterina Shapovalova, initiator and manager of the project. The treats were prepared by young cooks from the regions of Russia, from the Arctic to the Far East: from the Kamchatka Territory, the Udmurt Republic, the Murmansk Region, the Republic of Dagestan, the Altai Territory, the Republic of Karelia, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the Republic of Buryatia, the Rostov Region and the Republic of Kalmykia. Foreign diplomats and guests of the Diplomatic Games had the opportunity to be among the first to taste the dishes of the peoples of Russia within the program of the Festival of Young Chefs Food Map of Russia as part of the opening of the World Youth Festival.