The U.S. Senate on Wednesday gave the final go-ahead to the nomination of Lynne Tracy as the new U.S. ambassador to Russia at a time when relations between the two countries are at their lowest point in recent years.
The vote was 93 votes in favor and only two against, both from the Republican senators for Kentucky and Utah, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, respectively, as reported by the news portal The Hill.
During the session in the U.S. upper chamber, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Charles Schumer, has asserted that Tracy faces the task of «standing up» to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
For his part, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Democrat Bob Menendez, has assured that Tracy «will not shy away from confronting Putin’s abuses.» «The United States needs her in her job, Europe needs her in her job, Ukraine needs her in her job,» he has defended.
Moreover, the Senate’s ‘green light’ comes on a historic day when Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski will meet in Washington with U.S. President Joe Biden and later appear in a joint session on Capitol Hill.
In fact, Schumer himself has used the occasion to encourage his fellow senators to approve a package of $45 billion — nearly 42.5 billion euros — in emergency funds for Ukraine.
At the end of September, the Russian government had already given its approval to Tracy as the new U.S. ambassador, proposed by President Joe Biden, who has been awaiting the Senate’s decision ever since.
Tracy was already the ‘number two’ of the diplomatic legation between 2014 and 2017 and also headed the U.S. diplomatic legation in Armenia.
The previous ambassador, John Sullivan, left Moscow in November after a term in which he was particularly critical of the policies promoted from the Kremlin and the violation of Human Rights in Russia.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
