KYIV — The top U.S. diplomat made a rare wartime visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, offering a sympathetic ear to its leaders as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seeks permission to use long-range U.S. missiles for strikes deep into Russia and with the repeated wail of air-raid sirens seeming to underscore his sense of urgency.
Kyiv’s latest attempt to sway the Biden administration came as Ukraine faces routine barrages meant to devastate the country’s power sector, a situation that Blinken warned ahead of the visit could soon get worse after the United States and its European allies accused Iran of shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia this month.
Ukraine’s lobbying effort is a continuation of the dynamic that has marked relations between Kyiv and Washington since the full-scale Russian invasion 2½ years ago. Ukraine has pushed for more and better weaponry, while Washington has resisted, fearing escalation with Russia, only to relent later. Zelensky also promised Wednesday to offer a “victory plan” to President Joe Biden this month but offered few details.
Blinken offered no concrete assurances about an imminent policy change for Ukraine’s use of the weapons, saying only that he would bring the case back to the White House for further discussion. Speaking to reporters here alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, he said that “no doubt” Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will discuss the issue when they meet in Washington on Friday.
“We have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt we will continue,” Blinken said. He added that escalation is “one of the factors that we always consider, but it’s certainly not the only factor, and it is not necessarily the dispositive factor.”
Still, with Blinken warning that the Iranian missiles were about to unleash a new wave of pain on Ukraine, the battlefield context seemed to be in rapid evolution, which is likely to be a factor in discussions back in Washington.
With Biden’s time in office waning, pressure is increasing both on the Ukrainians and the White House to lock in decisions about the future of the conflict, ahead of any possible policy shift should former president Donald Trump prevail in November’s election. Trump, asked twice at the presidential debate Tuesday whether he wanted Kyiv to win the war, deflected and said that “I want the war to stop.” Vice President Kamala Harris, his opponent, said she would continue current U.S. policy and told Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch.”
“We remain fully committed to Ukraine’s victory,” Blinken said, implicitly rebuking Trump’s hesitation. “Support for Ukraine will endure because it doesn’t depend on any one country, any one party, any one election.”
Lammy, whose nation has provided Ukraine with long-range Storm Shadow missile systems, said discussions on whether to allow long-distance strikes into Russia would probably continue “over the next few weeks.”
The Ukrainians argue that being empowered to use such weaponry against Russian territory would reduce the threat by forcing the Kremlin to pull key forces deeper inside its country. They also want to be able to hit a bridge that connects the Crimean Peninsula with the Russian mainland and forms a key military supply route. But Biden has been cautious, worried that allowing the change could draw the United States more deeply into direct conflict with Russia.
In May, after Russian forces pushed over the border into the Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials amplified their pleas to be able to use certain U.S. weaponry to strike back into Russia. Washington debated the issue for 17 days as Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, nearly came within range of Russian artillery stationed on Russian soil. Eventually, Biden approved the use of certain weapons, including HIMARS rocket artillery, inside of Russia.
Even that agreement limited the Ukrainians to striking only within a small distance of the border, a move that Kyiv said left them unable to target key airfields — including those they said stored airplanes used to drop glide bombs on Kharkiv.
The Biden administration supplied Ukraine with long-range ATACMS missiles last September but has not allowed them to be used against Russian territory. The missiles, which have a range of about 180 miles, have been used extensively against Russian forces in Crimea, Ukrainian territory that the Kremlin occupied in 2014. Ukraine has a dwindling stockpile, however, and U.S. officials say the Pentagon’s own stocks are also sufficiently limited that they cannot offer many more to Kyiv.
With Russia now advancing quickly on the eastern city of Pokrovsk, there are echoes of the May pleas in the revamped campaign to approve the use of ATACMS and other long-range weapons inside of Russia. Ukraine is doubtful of U.S. claims that such a move would cause a dangerous escalation by Putin, and insists it is necessary to help turn the tide of the war.
Ukrainian leaders last month made a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, seizing hundreds of square miles of Russian territory in the first major Ukrainian advance across the border since the February 2022 invasion. The move has unsettled many Russians in the region and delivered a morale boost to the Ukrainian public. Leaders in Kyiv say that the seizure of territory will help increase pressure on Moscow to make a deal to end the war — and that it is a sign that pushing back on Russia does not necessarily lead to catastrophic responses.
“We had enough willpower and enough strength in our partners to take such decisions” to push into Kursk, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told reporters after his first meetings with his U.S. and British counterparts since becoming Ukraine’s top diplomat last week following a cabinet reshuffle.
“We can see clearly that we have crossed the line of this fear of escalation,” he said.
Ukrainian officials say they have not yet heard a convincing U.S. argument about the risk of long-range strikes on Russia.
“It’s perhaps some kind of mystical story. There isn’t a single rational argument in it for the U.S.; they just believe that it could lead to something bad,” one Ukrainian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the issue. “We’ve proven many times that Putin can do nothing new in response.”
Separate from the back-and-forth about long-range fires into Russia, Blinken on Wednesday announced that the Biden administration would offer $325 million to support Ukraine’s struggling energy grid, $290 million in humanitarian assistance such as food and shelter, and $102 million to demine Ukrainian territory from unexploded ordnance left behind by the fighting.
Blinken did not spend the night in Kyiv during his visit, which he conducted by taking an armored overnight train each way via Poland. But he did stop for a bowl of borscht, the famous Ukrainian beet soup, at the boutique restaurant of a chef, Yevhen Klopotenko, who successfully campaigned for the soup to be added to a UNESCO cultural heritage list.
Klopotenko tweeted a photo of him speaking with Blinken and wrote that he was “persuading him that it was necessary to take the correct long-distance decisions.”
He also got a taste of ordinary life for Kyiv’s citizens, which was repeatedly interrupted Wednesday with blaring air raid sirens as fighter jets took off inside Russia, including during a meeting with Zelensky at the ornate presidential palace. Sirens also started blaring just as Blinken departed a news conference and prepared to move from the Foreign Ministry building toward his heavily armored SUV.
The Harris-Trump debate aired during the inbound train journey, and some diplomats stayed up to catch the first part of the joust to prepare themselves for questions in Kyiv about the U.S. political situation.
Zelensky on Wednesday told a conference in Kyiv that his “victory plan” would have “both psychological and political … influence” on Russia’s decision to end the war.
“If partners support it, it will make it easier for Ukraine to force Russia to end the war,” Zelensky told the gathering of backers of Ukraine.
Zelensky will travel this month to the United States, where he will attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York. He has said he hopes to present the plan to Biden while in the country.
Francis reported from Brussels.
