Ukraine is a nation at war, which is why Natalie Jaresko, the minister of finance, has travelled 32 kilometres from Kyiv to the town of Irpin, a settlement of 40,000 on the edge of a pine forest. She's here to visit a rearguard army hospital and to console convalescing veterans of recent battles against Russian forces and their proxies in the Ukrainian east. "Where did you serve?" she asks, moving slowly from room to room. "How were you wounded?" She may be from Chicago's West Side, but she speaks Ukrainian fluently, and if anyone notices her American accent, no one seems to care. Jaresko tells the soldiers they're heroes, the country's national accountant handling a job for generals. The crisis has thrust people into unlikely roles.
Bloomberg Businessweek: The American woman who stands between Putin and Ukraine
Ukraine's Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko attends the \"Europa-Forum\" series of events organised by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung foundation on April 1, 2015 in Berlin.
