On January 17, 2019 Ambassador Jayatilleka paid a courtesy call on Ambassador of the Republic of South Africa, H.E. Ms. Nomasonto Maria Sibanda-Thusi, a senior diplomat who previously served as Ambassador in France and Guinea and as Permanent Representative to the UNESCO.
The Heads of Mission had a long conversation on the current political and economic situation in their respective countries and the world, and the strong relations among the BRICS.

On January 16, 2019, the revived Russia-Sri Lanka Friendship Society (RSLFS), which was founded back in 1959, invited H. E. Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and Madame Sanja Jayatilleka to a meeting, which was held in the office of the Russian Association for International Cooperation (RAIC) at the Federation Council of the Russian Federation. The meeting was attended by cosmonaut Valeriy Tokarev, the President of the Friendship Society with Sri Lanka; Mr. Vladimir Polozkov, Deputy Chairman of RSLFS Board and RAIC General Secretary; H. E. Dr. Mikhail Konarovsky, RSLFS Board member and former Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Afghanistan; Ms. Marina Korosteleva, RSLFS Board member and Deputy Secretary General of RAIC; and Ms. Elizaveta Stupanskaya, Executive Secretary of RSLFS.

The 10th Gaidar Forum 2019, which has been held since 2010 in memory of Yegor Gaidar, leading Russian economist and ideologue of the reforms of the early 1990s, gathered the record number of 17 thousand experts, famous scientists, public and political figures, and foreign diplomats at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow.