Amid Conflict, President Biden Noms Bridget Brink As US Ambassador To Ukraine
After US officials went to Ukraine, they said they were going to give more money and reopen the US embassy in Kyiv.
Brink, who is currently the ambassador to Slovakia, has been a diplomat for her entire career.
She has been a senior advisor and deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs at the US Department of State, where she worked on issues in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. She also served as deputy chief of mission in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Tbilisi, Georgia, where she worked on issues in those countries.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made an unannounced trip to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was told about Brink's nomination. The official announcement of Brink's nomination came on Monday, after the trip.
Washington didn't say when the US embassy in Kyiv, which was closed days before Russia invaded on February 24, would be back open.
Blinken and Austin also said that the US will give Ukraine another $300 million in military aid and $165 million in ammunition. Since the invasion began, the US has given Ukraine $3.7 billon worth of aid.
The last Ukraine ambassador was Marie Yovanovitch, who was fired by then-President Trump in 2019. There has not been one since then.
An investigation by the House of Representatives into whether Trump and his allies tried to find bad information about Biden's son's business dealings in Ukraine was centered around Yovanovitch being fired.
It will be up to the United States Senate to whether that Brink, who is from Michigan and can speak Russian, will be confirmed to the new post.
William Taylor, a retired diplomat who briefly served as the head of the US embassy in Ukraine after Yovanovitch was fired, told the New York Times that he thought Brink would be approved by both parties.
“It will be great to have a Senate-confirmed ambassador out there who clearly has the authority to speak to the president,” he said.
