US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent
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US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent will temporarily lead the US Embassy in Ukraine.
The head of the US Embassy will be replaced in Ukraine. For now, temporarily, but perhaps only for now.
The embassy will now be run by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent. For him, this is already his third business trip to Kiev and he is very familiar with our country. Kent is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, and as they say in the media, “he is well oriented not only in the surface, but also in the underwater currents of Ukrainian political and economic life.”
Correspondent.net figured out what to expect from such an appointment.
Preparing a visit to Biden
George Kent is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. An official comment from the US embassy said he will arrive in Kiev later this week to serve as Chargé d’Affaires at the US Embassy in Kiev until the end of July.
“Charge d’Affaires of the United States Christina Queen will return to Ukraine after a two-week vacation and take up her duties,” the embassy said.
Although earlier there was information that Kent will stay at the head of the embassy until the official appointment of a new US ambassador to Ukraine, which may occur in October-November 2021.
According to ZN.ua, Queen will not just go on vacation, but will also leave Kiev to prepare the visit of the President of Ukraine to the United States. There is no approved date for the visit yet, but sources call July 26 as a working date. Another possible date is after August 2.
Working through Zelenskiy’s upcoming visit to Washington may be one of Kent’s tasks.
“A visit to the United States is the most practical. It is necessary to correctly assess the situation in which the trip is being prepared and draw up directives for the host country. I suppose that the topics will be relations with Russia, Donbass, Crimea and the Crimean Platform, Nord Stream 2 and compensation for it, a trilateral contact group on Donbass, ”said Igor Popov, MP of the eighth convocation, who was a member of the parliamentary friendship group with the United States.
Familiar with Ukraine
Kent speaks fluent Ukrainian and knows a lot about the country. He worked at the US Embassy in Kiev for two cadences – the last in 2015-2018 as Deputy Chief of Mission.
In 2019, Kent was interrogated in the Trump impeachment case. His testimony, among other things, concerned various aspects of the work of the Americans on the territory of Ukraine. In particular, during his testimony in Congress, Kent said that former Attorney General Yuriy Lutsenko promised to take revenge on former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. He also noted that “gun-looters” were involved in the campaign against the diplomat.
Kent, at one time was an active promoter on the American side of the creation of anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine. It is expected that with his arrival, the fight against corruption in Ukraine will receive a new impetus.
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