The American ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, has told an interesting story from the beginning of her diplomatic career.
Brink had joined the US State Department in 1996, while her first assignment abroad was as consular political officer at the US Embassy in Belgrade from 1997 to 1999.
But, in this task, her mission was to report on the war crimes that Serbia was committing in Kosovo.
She says that this was one of the moments when she seriously considered withdrawing from the Foreign Service.
“There are two moments in my life when I almost left the Foreign Service. I will tell you about one. For my first assignment, the State Department sent me to Belgrade in what was then the former Yugoslavia. It was the late 1990s. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It was war. And it was ugly. I was a brand new political officer reporting on Kosovo. In a shocking moment that I will never forget, my boss came into my office wearing a jacket and helmet that was too big and said: ‘Now you are in charge of Kosovo – I want you to go and report what happened. It will be difficult. If you need anything, let me know,'” Brink recalls her boss’s words.
She further tells about the monitoring she did in the war zones in Kosovo, although she emphasizes that she had no idea what she was getting into.
“I had no idea what I was getting into, but I was ready to test my skills. And I was tested. In those days we drove around the war zone in unarmored cars, or as we called them ‘soft skins’. I learned that you can’t hear the sound of artillery if you’re in an armored vehicle, you have to be in a ‘soft skin’, with the windows open.”
Ambassador Brink also recounted the atrocities she had seen committed by Serbian forces against Kosovo Albanians – which she calls war crimes.
“At that time the Serbs were committing war crimes against the Kosovars and I was often the first international diplomat, and the only diplomat, on the scene – reporting on the horrific atrocities – families killed, maimed and left on their lawns front. Homes and lives destroyed with a viciousness and effort I didn’t know was possible.”
“Throughout the house, even the sink faucets were broken so water would still flow in, things strewn across yards, cars with broken windows, flat tires. I had studied the concepts of justice and injustice, but I never knew or felt what they really meant. It was a heavy responsibility to carry for a young and inexperienced Foreign Service officer just graduated and newly trained,” she said during a speech at Kenyon College in Ohio, USA.
She says she joined the Service to make a difference, “not to witness horror”, adding that in a conversation with her boss at the time, a diplomat called Bob Norman, she told him: “I didn’t I joined for this work”.
“He gently put his arm on my shoulder and just said, ‘Yeah, that’s what you joined for, you just didn’t know it.'”
Ambassador Bridget Brink has started her duty as the chief American diplomat in Ukraine in 2022.
