Ukraine should send Washington a soldier, not another politician

It doesn't need to be a general. It needs to be someone who actually served — ideally someonewho spent the war in unmanned systems, drones, the one area where Ukraine isn't askingWashington for help but has something to teach it. American planners are studying Ukrainiandrone doctrine right now, trying to figure out how a country with a fraction of the Pentagon'sbudget built the most combat-tested drone force on earth. Put that person in the embassy and therelationship stops being a one-way request line. It becomes a trade: we need your Patriots, youneed to understand what we've learned about killing armor with a $500 quadcopter. That's aconversation two militaries have as equals. It's not one a career diplomat can convincingly host.

There's a deeper reason to make this pick, though, and it's about what the embassy signals, notjust what its ambassador knows. Ukraine aid has become one of the most partisan fights inAmerican politics — pulled in one direction by one party, another by the other, with Kyiv's ownimage getting dragged into that fight whether it wants to be or not. The US military doesn't workthat way. Whatever else divides Washington, the armed forces have a real tradition, going backgenerations, of staying above the partisan fray — an officer serves the country, not a party, andeveryone in that town still respects that distinction even when they respect little else about eachother. Ukraine should want to borrow that credibility. A soldier in the ambassador's chair doesn'tread as anyone's ally in Congress. He or she reads as someone who did the job, on behalf of thecountry, full stop — which is precisely the position Kyiv should want to occupy in a capitalwhere the war itself has started to split along party lines.

Ukraine already knows this works, in a rougher form. Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief, is ambassador in London now, and by most accounts a serious one — not a ceremonialexile, someone the British defense establishment actually listens to. Further back, Israel sentYitzhak Rabin to Washington in 1968, straight from commanding the IDF through the Six-DayWar, and the five years he spent there are widely credited with locking in the modern US-Israelsecurity relationship — precisely because nobody in the Pentagon or on the Hill mistook him fora political operator.

Svyrydenko may well be capable and hard-working. That was never really the question. Thequestion is what kind of relationship Kyiv wants with Washington for the next several years: onemore name in a rotating political cast, or someone who fought, who understands what the frontactually needs, and who nobody in either party can plausibly accuse of playing politics. Zelenskyshould look for that person now — and send them to the one posting that will shape how this warends.