Europe

Biden awaiting approval from Ukraine on ambassador selection: report

by Rachel Scully - 01/31/22 2:46 PM ET

President Joe Biden is reportedly close to announcing his ambassador to Ukraine but is still waiting on formal approval from the Ukrainian government.

The president has reportedly selected the current U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, Bridget Brink, a source familiar told CNN. However, Biden has not officially nominated her yet because the administration is still waiting on approval from Kyiv.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the ambassador to Ukraine would be announced “very shortly” in a press conference earlier this month.

“I can tell you that when an ambassador is nominated, that person will have the full confidence of the president of the United States, that person will be someone that is well known to me and with whom I have a close relationship, and that person will have very demonstrable expertise and knowledge in this region,” he said.

A source close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN that the Ukrainian government is still vetting Brink. The approval process for ambassadors to foreign governments can take anywhere between days and weeks.

Until an ambassador is approved, Kristina Kvien, the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, currently remains the country’s top diplomat in Kyiv.

The U.S. has not had a permanent ambassador to Ukraine since Marie Yovanovitch was recalled by the Trump administration in May 2019. She later told House impeachment investigators that former President Trump “knee-capped” U.S. anticorruption efforts in Ukraine, among other allegations.

Last week, the State Department ordered family members of government employees at the embassy to leave the country while also allowing nonessential staffers to depart amid the growing worries of a Russian invasion.

The Biden administration on Monday said that it’s preparing to sanction several Russians who are “in or near the inner circles of the Kremlin and play a role in government decision making or are at a minimum complicit in the Kremlin’s destabilizing behavior” as part of the latest effort to discourage an invasion of Ukraine.

Tags Ambassador Donald Trump Joe Biden Marie Yovanovitch Russia Ukraine