World

Biden Picks Bridget Brink to Be Ambassador to Ukraine


WASHINGTON – President Biden’s choice for ambassador to Ukraine will boost relations between Washington and Kyiv Veteran diplomats say after years without a Senate-confirmed special envoy, the US’ return to a wartime diplomatic presence presents new risks for the Biden administration.

After months of delay confounding veteran diplomatsMr. Biden on Monday announced his intention to nominate Bridget Brink, the current US ambassador to Slovakia. A native of Michigan, Brink joined the State Department in 1996 and has served in Serbia, Uzbekistan and Georgia.

If confirmed, Brink would become a high-level interlocutor between the Ukrainian government and the Biden administration, which has had unusually direct contact. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken talks several times a week with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, and other top Biden officials are in regular contact with their equivalents. Although the United States has been represented by a capable ambassador to Kristina Kvien, analysts say there is no substitute for a designated domestic official who can coordinate across multiple departments and agencies. mandarin.

Currently, Ms. Brink has no clear base of activities. The State Department closed the Kyiv embassy shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 and subsequently ordered all American diplomats to leave the country. No one is known to have returned.

After a secret visit to Ukraine over the weekendHowever, Mr Blinken told reporters that the US would begin to restore its diplomatic presence in the country and that he hoped the embassy could reopen “within a couple of weeks”.

The return of American diplomats home, even to western and central cities a few hours from the current front line, certainly comes with a degree of danger. Although Russian forces have united to wage a devastating ground war in the south and east of Ukraine, they are still conducting periodic air strikes across the country, including in mid-March. April. missile attack in Lviv killing eight people.

Starting this week, diplomats working from eastern Poland will make day trips to the relatively peaceful city of Lviv in western Ukraine and back to Poland, US officials said. Lan in the night.

“We’re doing it on purpose, we’re doing it carefully, we’re doing it with the safety of our employees first,” Mr Blinken said.

During a visit to Kyiv, Mr Blinken said he had seen people walking in the streets, “evidence of the fact that the battle for Kyiv has been won and what it looks like on the surface, at least, is a battle. live a normal life in Kyiv.”

Brink will be the first ambassador confirmed by the Senate to hold the post since mid-2019, when President Donald J. Trump removed Marie L. Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who opposed the digging effort. by his own attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, soiled the country on Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter.

In 2019, at the swearing-in of Slovakia’s ambassador, Ms. Brink spoke about the experiences of her husband’s grandfathers and grandparents. in Europe throughout World War II. In February, Ms. Brink visited the border between Ukraine and Slovakia to witness the arrival of Ukrainian refugees. “My heart goes out to all the victims of this senseless war,” she speaksaccording to a news release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Congressional officials note that Mr. Biden has yet to formally submit his nomination, even though the Biden administration informed the Ukrainian government months ago that Brink was the candidate for the job. It is customary to seek pre-approval for ambassadorial selections from host governments, and Ukraine has been slow to sign for unclear reasons.

In a statement Monday, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, said the Senate “will prioritize her confirmation when she arrives before the Senate and move her away as quickly as possible.” ”

Republicans have blocked or delayed dozens of Mr. Biden’s diplomatic options, but a Senate Republican aide active on foreign affairs said on Monday he did not anticipate much. opposition to Mrs. Brink’s nomination.

It is not clear how well Ms Brink and other US diplomats in Kyiv will be protected. US embassies around the world are guarded by dozens of US Marines in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan. However, US officials declined to say whether the military would accompany the returning diplomats.

Eric S. Rubin, president of the American Foreign Service Association, called Brink “an outstanding State Department employee” and said he hoped she could be confirmed quickly. . He welcomed Mr Blinken’s plan to reopen the embassy in Kyiv.

Some former diplomats and US officials worry that the Biden administration removed its personnel from Ukraine earlier this year too quickly. US diplomats left the country before some of their foreign counterparts.

In a speech in October, Blinken himself warned that the State Department had become too risk-averse and argued that diplomats could not function effectively in dangerous areas if they did not take risks. ro.

“A risk-free world is not a world that US foreign policy can deliver,” Blinken said. “We have to take the risk and manage it intelligently.”

Before staff reduction, about 800 to 900 people work in the US Embassy in Kyiv. About 300 of them are Americans, and the rest are Ukrainian employees.

William B. Taylor Jr., a retired veteran diplomat who served as ambassador to Ukraine twice, said he spoke with American diplomats and Ukrainian citizens who worked at the embassy and know they look forward to coming back.

“For diplomats, this is what they do,” he said. “For most State Department employees assigned overseas, they understand the risks.”

Mr. Taylor said the embassy was not likely to be the target of a Russian attack and the fact that some US allies had decided to return gave Washington greater impetus.

But even if Russia has no intention of harming Americans, war zones are always dangerous. During NATO’s 1999 bombing of Serbia, the United States mistakenly attacked China’s embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese state media employees.

The State Department has stepped up protections for diplomats after President Vladimir V. Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and sent Russian weapons and troops to support the forces. separatists in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Taylor said that when he first served as ambassador, from 2006 to 2009, he could go anywhere without diplomatic security. After returning in 2019, after Mr. Trump decided to remove Ms Yovanovitch from the job, he could not run for office in the capital without confidential information.

Like many US embassies, the embassy in Kyiv is housed in a fortified building outside the city center. The Ukrainians helped secure the embassy, ​​and a small group of US marines was also stationed there before the fighting began in February.

US officials have been particularly wary of the following diplomatic risk 2012 attack by militants into a US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Republicans, including Mike Pompeo, a congressman who later became CIA director and secretary of state, tormented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for years with allegations of negligence.

Security will be one of many issues Brink is expected to deal with in Kyiv if she is confirmed by the Senate. She will likely regularly visit the presidential palace in the center of Kyiv and the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is expected to help establish secure communication between the leaders of Ukraine and the US, and she will be tasked with transferring aid requests from Ukraine to Washington.



Source link

news7f

News7F: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button