After a secret, high-level trip to Ukraine on Sunday, the United States announced over $700 million in military assistance for Ukraine and allies and the return of U.S. diplomats to the war-torn country.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin left reporters across the border in Poland on Sunday, for security reasons, as they ventured into Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other government leaders in what was the first U.S. visit to Ukraine since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. The top U.S. officials took a train from Poland to Kyiv, the capital, and they went straight to the presidential palace, Blinken told reporters.
The pair of Cabinet secretaries informed Zelensky that the U.S. would provide $713 million in foreign military financing for Ukraine and 15 allied and partner countries, which included $322 million specifically for Kyiv, and that the State Department notified Congress on Sunday of a foreign military sale of up to $165 million for nonstandard ammunition for Ukraine.
“Russia has sought as its aim to take away [Ukraine’s] sovereignty, to take away its independence. That has failed,” Blinken said during a news conference with Austin on Monday at an undisclosed location in Poland near the Ukrainian border.
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“It sought to assert the power of its military, its economy. We, of course, are seeing just the opposite,” Blinken continued.
“The bottom line is this: We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene,” Blinken said. “And our support for Ukraine going forward will continue. It will continue until we see final success.”
President Joe Biden will nominate Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, to be ambassador to Ukraine, a position that has been vacant for two years, the U.S. leaders told Zelensky. In addition to Brink’s nomination, the U.S. will return its diplomats to Ukraine “next week,” Blinken told reporters.
“In terms of the embassy, we will have American diplomats back in Ukraine starting next week,” he said.
Diplomats will start making “day trips” to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv beginning this week, as U.S. officials navigate the embassy’s reopening.
“They’ll then start the process of looking at how we actually reopen the embassy itself in Kyiv. I think that will take place over a couple of weeks would be my expectation. We’re doing it deliberately, we’re doing it carefully, we’re doing it with the security of our personnel foremost in mind, but we’re doing it,” Blinken said.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was abandoned two weeks before Russia’s invasion, like many others, though some nations have or are in the process of reopening them. The United Kingdom, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain are among the countries that have announced intentions to reopen their embassies.
The delegation also reportedly informed Zelensky of the approval of the sale of $165 million in non-U.S.-made ammunition to Ukraine. The ammunition is compatible with Soviet-era weapons used by Ukrainian soldiers.
At the press conference in Poland, Austin told reporters that the U.S. is “doing everything that we can” to get the type of weapons that Ukraine needs into the battlefield.
“So [the Ukrainians] need long-range fires. You’ve heard them express a need for tanks. And we’re doing everything that we can to get them the types of support, the types of artillery and munitions that will be effective in this stage of the fight,” Austin said following the meeting.
“You’ve seen what we’ve done here in the recent past with a recent $800 million authorization provided by the president that allows us to provide five battalions of 155 howitzers, hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery, and so we’re also engaging our colleagues in other countries for the same type of capability,” Austin continued.
The U.S. is training Ukrainian forces on some of the weapons they’re providing to Ukrainian forces. Roughly 50 members of Ukraine’s armed forces received training on the howitzers in an undisclosed European country, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby confirmed last week. At that time, the U.S. hadn’t begun training Ukrainian soldiers on how to use the newly developed Phoenix Ghost tactical unmanned aerial systems, which are small drones that are “designed for tactical operations — in other words, largely but not exclusively to attack targets,” Kirby added.
Blinken and Austin reportedly met with Zelensky, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, and other officials for three hours in Kyiv.
“We were very happy to have that opportunity,” Blinken said, describing the meeting.
“During the meeting, we expressed our deepest condolences to the president for the loss of so many civilians and, of course, the loss of those courageous troops that have done a magnificent job of pushing back Russian forces,” he added. “We also expressed our admiration for their professionalism and for their commitment to defend their democracy.”
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Zelensky had announced on Saturday that he was meeting with U.S. officials in Ukraine’s capital city on Sunday.
The latest financial pledge and ammunition sale to Ukraine brings the total amount of U.S. military assistance since the start of the war to $3.7 billion.
