Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many fluent Russian speakers have been trained or recruited by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) since November 2016; and how many fluent Russian speakers are employed by the FCO.

Russian is a priority language for the FCO. Where required, officers undertake up to 14 months full time language training to reach C1 Operational level as defined in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), an international standard to describe language ability. Since November 2016 a total of 64 officers have undertaken or are undergoing Russian language training. The FCO has 212 employees registered with some level of Russian, 83 of which have reached C1 or above (as of December 2017).