In the relations between Ukraine and the United States, a new influential figure has emerged. She is highly influential by all indications. On September 14, President Biden appointed Penny Pritzker to the newly created position of Special Representative for Ukraine's Economic Recovery.

What is included in her portfolio? How to persuade Western businesses to invest in Ukraine even during the war? And what connects her to Ukraine? These and other questions were discussed by EuroPravda editor Sergiy Sydorenko with Penny Pritzker. You can read below a summary of the conversation.

For me, the chance to represent the United States in this role is personal, because my family fled Ukraine in the late 1800s from an area just outside Kyiv, so my family are immigrants from the area that is being challenged by the Russians.

Having the opportunity on behalf of the United States to work with our allies and partners to help Ukraine remain an independent democratic state, progressing on its chosen path of European integration, is a calling of the highest order.

My family were grain store owners originally and left because of a pogrom in Tsarist Russia.

When my great-grandfather Nicholas immigrated from outside of Kyiv to Chicago, he spoke no English. Neither he nor my great-grandmother really had a lot of resources. But they were able to educate themselves.

My great-grandfather went from being a young boy learning English by selling newspapers on Maxwell Street in Chicago to becoming first a pharmacist and then a lawyer.

My great-grandmother started the Nickel Club in Chicago: each week the women in her community would put aside a nickel or a penny to help new immigrants from Ukraine.

And so this is a big part of my history.

My portfolio includes working with the government of Ukraine, with Ambassador Brink and the entirety of the US government, the private sector, and of course our allies, to accelerate Ukraine's economic recovery.

The focus will begin with working on reforms that bake in transparency and accountability into the reconstruction effort, whether that’s in the regulatory environment or law enforcement, judiciary, anti-corruption, state-owned enterprise governance, etc.

Another big part of my portfolio is working with the private sector to not just remove the barriers to investment, but really to encourage companies in a variety of sectors of the economy, particularly in energy, transportation, logistics, agriculture, critical materials, and IT technology. I aim to encourage American businesses and other businesses to understand the opportunity for investment and recovery in Ukraine.

And then, of course, I will be an authoritative representative to the multi-agency donor coordination platform, working with our partner governments and the EU and the international financial institutions, as well as the private sector.

And then, of course, communicating both with Congress about the importance of economic recovery to the success of Ukraine now and post-war, as well as communicating with the diaspora in the United States as to the status of our engagement and the opportunities that exist in Ukraine.

So it's an economically driven portfolio, but it’s broad, it has many facets.

The policy of the administration is that we're determined that those who have been enabling Putin's war will also help pay its cost.

The United States is focused on meeting the needs of Ukraine now, as well as for the long-term recovery and security of Ukraine.

However, there will be conditions to the money from the United States. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone in Ukraine, because our government wants to see Ukraine make progress on the various areas to make the environment hospitable to private sector investment.

First, it’s handling the money appropriately.

And second, it’s meeting the reform needs that are necessary for Ukraine to achieve EU accession and become part of a Western trading bloc, which is something that Ukraine wants to do, so I feel this is a virtuous circle.

Ukraine's economic recovery is going on now. Housing is being built, infrastructure is being invested in, energy is being invested in.

Ukraine has shown great resilience during wartime. The private sector needs to understand in better detail the situation on the ground, which is one of the reasons I look forward to visiting Ukraine.

Read the full interview "Ukraine Will Have Conditions for US Money"