In a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of the war in Ukraine, the former U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, Bridget A. Brink, wrote that she had resigned last month because she could not carry out a policy that “put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia.”
“I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded and children killed with impunity,” Ms. Brink wrote in an op-ed published Friday in the Detroit Free Press. “Peace at any price is not peace at all — it is appeasement,” she added.
Ms. Brink, a career diplomat who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, resigned in April as tensions over the Trump administration’s policy began to spill into public view. Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that his only goal is to end the killing, but he has largely refrained from saying anything critical of Russia.
After a missile attack on the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih killed 19 people, including nine children, she issued a statement that conspicuously failed to specify that Russia was responsible — a notable deviation from her usually clear language.
As the Trump administration exerted increasing pressure on Kyiv — including briefly halting military assistance and intelligence sharing after President Trump castigated President Volodymyr Zelensky during a disastrous meeting in the Oval Office — Ms. Brink remained silent in public.
But on Friday, she wrote that it had grown evident she could not carry out her duties “in good faith.”
Ms. Brink was nominated to the post by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and arrived in Kyiv in May 2022. There was no immediate comment on her criticism from the State Department. At the time of her resignation, a spokesperson for the department said in an email that Ms. Brink had “been the ambassador there for three years — that’s a long time in a war zone.” And the State Department’s chief spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, had declined to discuss the matter beyond saying, “We wish her well.”
During her time in Ukraine, Ms. Brink developed a reputation as a powerful voice for reform, taking aim at government corruption and working to build durable democratic institutions, sometimes irritating powerful officials in Kyiv.
Ms. Brink also toured the country to bear witness to the devastation being wrought by the Russian invasion.
“Over a career spent in conflict zones, I’ve seen mass atrocities and wanton destruction firsthand but we have never seen violence so systematic, so widespread and so horrifying in Europe since World War II,” Ms. Brink, a native of Michigan, wrote in the Detroit Free Press op-ed.
Ms. Brink added: “Russia’s war is about more than foreign policy or economics. It’s about who we are.”
Marc Santora has been reporting from Ukraine since the beginning of the war with Russia. He was previously based in London as an international news editor focused on breaking news events and earlier the bureau chief for East and Central Europe, based in Warsaw. He has also reported extensively from Iraq and Africa.
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