The new US ambassador to Ukraine has arrived in Kyiv, the Guardian understands, a symbolic move after the US withdrew all diplomats from the country before the Russian invasion in February.
A career diplomat who served as US ambassador to Slovakia until recently, Bridget Brink was nominated by President Joe Biden in late April and confirmed unanimously by the US Senate on 18 May.
Brink confirmed her arrival in Kyiv with a tweet noting that she had visited the foreign ministry to present her credentials. “Our first priority is to help Ukraine defend itself,” she wrote.
The US embassy evacuated all family members and non-essential staff in January and moved operations to Lviv in western Ukraine in mid-February. Immediately before the Russian invasion, the diplomats moved again, to Rzeszów in Poland.
At the time, the Americans were criticised in some quarters for their departure, with widespread scepticism inside Ukraine and in other European capitals over the apocalyptic warnings coming from US and British intelligence that Russia was preparing for full-scale war.
In the end, almost all western diplomats left Kyiv, either before or immediately after Russia launched its invasion.
Since the Russian army was pushed away from the region around Kyiv at the end of March, small teams of diplomats have been slowly returning. The British ambassador arrived at the end of April. The US embassy restarted limited operations in Kyiv two weeks ago.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, called the reopening a “momentous step”, in a statement after the American flag was raised at the embassy on 18 May. The skeleton US diplomatic presence that has returned to Kyiv is mainly locked down at the embassy, a large compound in the suburbs.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported the Pentagon was considering deploying special forces operatives to guard the embassy.
When Brink presents her credentials to Zelenskiy it will mark the first time the US has had a full-fledged ambassador to Ukraine in three years, after the departure of Marie Yovanovitch in 2019, who was recalled by Donald Trump and became embroiled in the scandal over Trump associates attempting to pressure Zelenskiy to investigate the activities of Biden’s son in Ukraine.
During the buildup to Russia’s invasion, the US embassy was headed by a chargé d’affaires, Kristina Kvien.
