The ambassador of Thailand to Russia welcomed Thai students from Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and Kazan to talk about their well-being and share some challenges faced during their stay in Russia with the Ambassador and the Embassy’s staff to discuss possible solutions and ways to improve their living conditions during dinner on 23 June 2013 at the Ambassador’s residence. The Ambassador asked to learn about each student’s course, scholarship, university, and potential before giving them academic advice and suggestions on their future employment individually. In addition, he conveyed to the students that the Embassy has acknowledged about some difficulties faced by a number of those receiving scholarships from the Russian government. In this regard, the Embassy has both raised this setback with many related agencies of Thailand and the Russian side in order to consider providing extra disbursement for these students.

     During the past few years, there has been an escalating trend of the number of Thai students coming over to study in Russia. The reasons may be rooted from an expanding cooperation between academic institutions of Thailand and Russia, improved courses in Russian universities to meet the international standards, more scholarships offered by the Russian government annually without language requirements, and the Thai government’s policy requiring to hire more personnel with Russian language knowledge and expertise. However, there are currently only 122 Thai students studying in Russia, which is considered too little in comparison with Thai students in Western countries. This may be because of the language difficulty and general attitude towards the previous image of Russia in the Former Soviet Union times. To encourage more students to study in Russia, the Embassy has doubled the efforts to point out Russia’s significant academic potential, especially in the areas of science and technology, which has received a positive response from the Russian side through an increase of 20 more scholarships.