Bridget Brink speaks in Kyiv during a press conference following her appointment as the new US ambassador to Ukraine, 2 June 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE / OLEG PETRASYUK
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink, who resigned in April after three years in Kyiv, has revealed that she left her post over US President Donald Trump’s “appeasement” of Russia in its war against Ukraine.
In an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press in her home state of Michigan published on Friday, Brink said Trump’s policy since taking office in January had been “to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia”, which she said made it her “duty” to step down.
“I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded, and children killed with impunity,” Brink wrote. “The only way to secure US interests is to stand up for democracies and to stand against autocrats.”
“Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement,” she stressed, referring to the Trump administration’s eagerness to secure a swift end to the war with apparently little regard for Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity.
Prior to her resignation, Brink had served as the US ambassador to Kyiv since her appointment by former US President Joe Biden in May 2022, and had been a staunch advocate of continued US military aid for Ukraine.
Shortly before her resignation was announced last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised what he called Brink’s “weak” response to a Russian missile strike on his hometown of Kryvyi Rih that killed 20 people, including nine children.
Though Brink had written on X that she was “horrified” at the attack, which she said showed “why the war must end”, she made no mention of Russia being to blame.
In response, Zelensky said, “Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade”, accusing US officials of being “even afraid to say the word ‘Russian’ when talking about the missile that killed the children”.
A Financial Times review of Brink’s posts on X showed a marked change in her tone towards Russia since Trump’s inauguration in January. In the 75 days before Trump took office, Brink made 53 posts criticising Russia and its attacks on Ukraine, the FT said, but in the subsequent 75 days, she mentioned Russia in just five posts.
Earlier this month, the US Embassy in Kyiv announced the appointment of Julie S. Davis to lead the embassy as interim chargé d’affaires until a new ambassador is nominated by Trump. Davis, who is the current US ambassador to Cyprus and previously served as special envoy to Belarus, would work “tirelessly to end the war and stop the bloodshed”, the embassy said.