President Biden introduced his intention to nominate Bridget Brink as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The profession international service officer has served as ambassador to Slovakia since 2019.
/U.S. Department of State/AP
disguise caption
toggle caption
/U.S. Department of State/AP
President Biden introduced his intention to nominate Bridget Brink as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. The profession international service officer has served as ambassador to Slovakia since 2019.
/U.S. Department of State/AP
The U.S. hasn’t had an official ambassador to Ukraine since 2019, when former President Donald Trump eliminated Marie Yovanovitch from her function. After a number of years and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Biden says he plans to change that.
On Monday, the White House announced Biden’s intention to nominate Bridget Brink to the place.
Brink at the moment serves as the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia. The veteran diplomat has spent greater than twenty years in the Foreign Service specializing in Europe and Eurasia.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Monday that if confirmed, Brink will lead with “dedication and distinction.”
“Her decades of experience make her uniquely suited for this moment in Ukraine’s history,” he added.
She’s held positions in different former Soviet republics
Brink, who hails from Michigan, holds levels from Kenyon College as effectively as the London School of Economics and Political Science and speaks a number of languages, together with Russian.
She initially joined the State Department in 1996, in accordance to her official biography, and started her profession in Belgrade, Serbia.
Over the years she’s held a number of roles at the State Department, together with Cyprus desk officer and deputy director for southern European affairs. She was additionally the director for the Aegean and the South Caucasus at the National Security Council.
Brink served as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia from 2011 to 2014, then in Tashkent, Uzbekistan for a yr.
From there she turned a senior advisor at the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, the place she was answerable for points associated to Eastern Europe and the Caucusus.
Trump nominated her as ambassador to Slovakia in 2019. She was confirmed by the Senate, which can want to occur once more to ensure that her to assume her new place in Ukraine.
She has spoken about the ‘Translatlantic hyperlink’ in her skilled and private life
At her swearing-in ceremony in August 2019, Brink mentioned her deep ties to Europe, in what she described as a “Transatlantic bond” that “runs through my entire personal and professional life.”
She recalled being a pupil in London when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, for instance. And going again additional, she advised a narrative about her household’s expertise in World War II:
“Almost 80 years ago, my husband’s grandmother, Ada McIntyre, survived the Blitz in Manchester while her husband, Bernard McIntyre, bravely helped evacuate the soldiers trapped in Dunkirk as a member of the Royal Navy,” she stated. “In another theater of the war, a young U.S. Army doctor named Donald Brink twice treated the American Commander of the war in Europe.”
In a kind of circumstances, she stated, he and two different physicians had been known as on to full General Dwight Eisenhower’s bodily to decide his eligibility for promotion to his fourth star.
Citing household lore, Brink stated her grandfather noticed that Eisenhower’s blood stress was a bit excessive, and inspired him to “lie down for a few minutes and think happy thoughts.” It labored, and he handed his bodily.
“The rest, so they say, is history,” Brink stated. “General Eisenhower was promoted, became the architect of the Normandy campaign, and then President of the United States. Following the presidency, General Eisenhower also became the first Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.”
In that speech, Brink thanked lots of her mentors, colleagues and members of the family — together with her two youngsters, her husband and her British in-laws, calling theirs “literally a Transatlantic family.”
She visited the Ukrainian border shortly after Russia invaded
Brink visited Slovakia’s border with Ukraine on Feb. 25, a day after Russia started its invasion, in accordance to a State Department release.
She stated at the time that the U.S. would proceed to present help to the Ukrainian folks and work intently with Slovakia to assist it reply to “this unprovoked and unjustified attack by Russia.”
“As we all stand behind Ukraine, I have been closely monitoring the provision of direct humanitarian aid by Slovakia to Ukraine and the gas return capacity since 2014,” she added. “Witnessing the aid and support that all Slovak troops offer to Ukraine causes humility and admiration. My heart is with every victim of this senseless war.”
This story initially appeared in the Morning Edition live blog.