Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kiev on Tuesday on an unannounced diplomatic mission to reassure Ukraine that it has American support as it struggles to defend itself against intensifying Russian attacks.
“We know this is a challenging time,” Blinken said in the Ukrainian capital, where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The visit comes less than a month after Congress approved a long-delayed foreign assistance package that sets aside $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, much of which will go toward replacing artillery and defense systems. planes quite sold out.
Assistance from the new package “is on the way,” Blinken said, adding that some of it has already reached Ukraine.
He said the aid would “make a real difference” on the battlefield where the Russian army has, in some areas, taken the initiative against Kiev’s depleted forces.
On his fourth trip to Kiev since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Blinken will underscore the Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine’s long-term defense and security, U.S. officials said. They noted that since President Joe Biden signed the relief package late last month, the administration has announced $1.4 billion in short-term military assistance and $6 billion in long-term support.
It is “really trying to accelerate the pace” of U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said.
“What I’m going to suggest is that the level of intensity displayed right now in terms of moving things around is a 10 out of 10,” Sullivan told reporters at a White House press briefing on Monday.
Artillery, air defense interceptors and long-range ballistic missiles have already been delivered, some of them already to the front lines, said a senior US official traveling with the secretary on an overnight train from Poland.
Blinken “will send a strong signal of reassurance” to the Ukrainian leaders and civil society figures he will meet during his two-day visit, said the official, who spoke to journalists on condition of anonymity before Blinken’s meetings.
In a statement released after Blinken’s arrival, the State Department said it would hold talks with Zelenskyy and other senior Ukrainian officials “to discuss battlefield updates, the impact of new U.S. security and economic assistance, long-term security and other commitments, and work in progress”. to strengthen Ukraine’s economic recovery.”
Delays in U.S. assistance, especially since Israel’s war with Hamas began to worry senior administration officials, have triggered deep concerns in Kiev and Europe. Blinken, for example, has visited the Middle East seven times since the conflict in Gaza began in October. His last trip to Kiev was in September.
The US official added that Blinken would also give a speech on Tuesday extolling Ukraine’s “strategic successes” in the war. The intention is to complement a speech by Blinken last year in Helsinki, Finland, ridiculing Russian President Vladimir Putin for Moscow’s strategic failures in launching the war.
However, since the Helsinki speech, Russia has intensified its attacks, especially when the US House sat for months without taking any action on the aid package, forcing a suspension in the provision of most US assistance. Such attacks have increased in recent weeks as Russia sought to take advantage of Ukrainian shortages of manpower and weapons while new assistance was in transit.
Senior Biden administration officials and Ukrainian national security officials held a call Monday “about the situation on the front, about the capabilities they need most and a real triage effort to say, ‘Give us these things so quickly to that we may be in a position to effectively defend against Russian attack,” Sullivan said.
Zelenskyy said over the weekend that “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outnumbered and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to repel a significant Russian ground offensive.
Kremlin forces aim to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses before a large batch of new military aid for Kiev from the US and European partners arrives on the battlefield in the coming weeks and months, Ukrainian commanders and analysts say. This makes this period a window of opportunity for Moscow and one of the most dangerous for Kiev in the two-year war, they say.
The new Russian thrust into the northeastern region of Kharkiv and an assault into the eastern region of Donetsk come after months in which the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line barely moved. However, both sides utilized long-range attacks in what largely became a war of attrition.
Zelenskyy told Blinken that Ukraine urgently needs two Patriot air defense systems to protect Kharkiv.
The senior US official said that despite some recent setbacks, Ukraine can still claim significant victories. These include recovering around 50% of the territory that Russian forces occupied in the first months of the war, strengthening its economic position and improving transport and commercial links, notably through military successes in the Black Sea.
The official acknowledged that Ukraine faces “a tough fight” and is “under tremendous pressure” but argued that Ukrainians “will become increasingly confident” as new assistance from the US and other Western countries begins to emerge. .
Blinken said Sunday that there is “no doubt” that the months-long delay in aid has caused problems, but that “we are doing everything we can to expedite this assistance.”
“It’s a challenging time,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “We are not going anywhere, not more than about 50 countries that support Ukraine. This will continue, and if Putin thinks he can survive Ukraine, his supporters, he is wrong.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
