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Ukraine Names Veteran Diplomat as New US Envoy

Margaret Besheer

   UNITED NATIONS - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy named
   Volodymyr Yelchenko, 60, his envoy to Washington on Thursday. In
   choosing the soft-spoken but seasoned diplomat, he is putting his faith
   in Yelchenko to steer relations with the administration of President
   Donald Trump at a sensitive time.
   Ukraine's new envoy to Washington is no stranger to difficult
   situations, but he may face some of his biggest professional challenges
   yet, as he takes up his post in a city politically divided over whether
   Trump abused the power of his office by withholding military aid to
   Ukraine for personal political gain.
   Yelchenko has been Kyiv's ambassador to the United Nations since
   December 2015. His tenure included a two-year rotating seat on the
   powerful U.N. Security Council from 2016-17.
   He came to New York at the height of the crisis in eastern Ukraine,
   after Russia annexed Crimea and fomented an armed separatist insurgency
   in the country's east.
   Yelchenko, though calm and even-tempered in public, did not shrink from
   confrontation with his legendary Russian counterpart, Vitaly Churkin,
   at numerous Security Council meetings on the crisis.
   "Ambassador Yelchenko was quiet one-on-one, but there was nothing shy
   about him when he represented his country in the Security Council,"
   former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley wrote of him
   in her recent book, "With All Due Respect." She described the Ukrainian
   envoy as "a genuinely kind man," and one of Washington's "best friends"
   on the Security Council.

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