Siding with dictators not who we are: Ex-US envoy says Trump favoured Putin

Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said Wednesday that she stepped down from her post because President Donald Trump repeatedly favoured Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, adding that “siding with dictators is just not who we are.”

“I resigned as US Ambassador Ukraine when Trump kept siding with Putin over our democratic partner,” Brink wrote on X, while suggesting that her successor, Julie Davis, who has served just under a year in the role, is stepping down for similar reasons.

“I knew I had to speak out and run for office because siding with dictators is just not who we are,” Brink said.

Brink, who served in Kyiv from 2022 to 2025, is now campaigning for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has said Davis will step down later this year and retire, concluding a three-decade diplomatic career.

Davis took over as charg d’affaires on an interim basis in May last year, replacing Brink, who resigned in May 2025 in opposition to the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy.

A Financial Times report claimed Davis became frustrated in her role amid “differences with US President Donald Trump over his dwindling support for Ukraine,” though the State Department dismissed such claims as “false.”

The State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said, “Ambassador Davis has been a steadfast proponent of the Trump administration's efforts to bring about a durable peace between Russia and Ukraine.”

According to a report in CBC News, Stephen Sestanovich, George F Kennan Senior Fellow for Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, described the frequent turnover in Kyiv as “very much a part of a chaotic and dysfunctional management of the main government agencies responsible for foreign policy.”

Still, Sestanovich noted the Trump administration appears to prefer experienced diplomats in Kyiv.

“The Trump people seem more inclined to put an experienced foreign service officer in this job, rather than send out some underqualified junior nobody who hasn't held such a position before,” he said.

Ukraine has been at war since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Before returning to office, Trump had suggested he could quickly bring the conflict to an end, but more than a year into his second term, fighting continues.

With the US also dealing with a two-month-old conflict involving Iran, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Kyiv believes Washington’s attention is now elsewhere.

“We understand how the war in Iran is affecting the mindset of the American team,” Zelenskyy said in a video posted on X. “The Americans are focused on something else, not this war here in Europe.”

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