Biden names veteran diplomat as Ukraine ambassador

Bridget Brink is currently U.S. ambassador to Slovakia.

WASHINGTON — Bridget Brink, a veteran foreign service officer who has spent most of her career in the shadow of the former Soviet Union, has been nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine as the country fends off a Russian invasion that’s entered its third month.

The nomination comes as U.S. officials say American diplomats will soon return to Kyiv, which they evacuated when the war began. Ukrainian forces have since successfully defended the city, and most of the fighting has shifted toward the eastern part of the country.

Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland who has known Brink for years, described her as “not reckless, but fearless,” and expected she’ll be eager to get to Kyiv.

“She’s going to want to be there,” Fried said. “And if you tell her it’s dangerous, she’ll be like, ‘Yeah, so?’ ”

Brink is currently the ambassador to Slovakia and is married to another foreign service officer, Nicholas Higgins, who has worked around the world. They have two sons.

Biden’s choice of Brink comes after a lengthy delay. Although the president has moved to fill other diplomatic posts around the world, he waited more than a year after taking office before settling on

Brink, then nearly three more months for Monday’s announcement.

Brink was nominated by then-President Donald Trump to be ambassador to Slovakia.

The last Senate-approved ambassador to Ukraine was Marie Yovanovitch, who was pushed out by then-President Trump in 2019.

She later testified that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, had urged Ukrainian officials to investigate unproven corruption allegations against Joe Biden, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Trump held back $400 million in military aid for Ukraine as he was pressing for investigations, conduct for which he was later impeached by the House of Representatives. He was not convicted in the Senate.

Brink’s first posting was in Belgrade, Serbia. She also worked in Tbilisi, Georgia, before the Russian invasion in 2008.