President Biden appoints diplomat Bridget Brink as ambassador to Ukraine

The post has been unfilled for nearly three years.

Ambassador Brink, a career diplomat, has been serving as Ambassador to Slovakia since 2019. She has previously served in Serbia, Cyprus, Georgia and Uzbekistan, as well as in the White House National Security Council.

She is from Michigan and speaks Russian.

“Ambassador Brink’s ten years of experience make her the most suitable person for the moment in Ukraine’s history,” the State Department said in a statement.

The appointment requires confirmation from the US Senate. The United States has not had an ambassador to Ukraine since former President Donald Trump abruptly withdrew then-US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in May 2019.

Senate Democrat and Republican advisers said they did not anticipate problems in the process of approving Ambassador Brink. It was confirmed by unanimous vote in 2019 when former Republican President Donald Trump appointed her to her current post in Bratislava.

The announcement of her appointment was made during a weekend trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to the Ukrainian capital Kiev, where they met with President Volodomyr Zelenskiy and other senior Ukrainian officials.

Washington also announced that US diplomats would return to Ukraine this week – initially resuming “day trips” from Poland, where they are currently stationed in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv across the border.

“The increased US presence demonstrates our support for Ukraine and is part of the US commitment to return our diplomats to our Embassy in Kiev as soon as possible,” the State Department said in a statement.

The US diplomats left the Kiev embassy almost two weeks before the Russian aggression began on February 24, relocating some functions to Lviv before finally relocating to Poland.

top channel