Blinken, Austin meet with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, a wartime first for top U.S. officials
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/04/25/blinken-austin-meet-with-zelenskyy-in-kyiv-a-wartime-first-for-top-us-officials-.html
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin slipped into Ukraine on Sunday for an extraordinary wartime meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, bringing new promises of military and diplomatic support and defying grave concerns about whether it was safe to make the journey.
The trip, the highest-level American visit since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, was designed to show steadfast U.S. support for Ukraine and its defense, as the war enters a new, worrying phase expected to be marked by a major Russian offensive in Ukraine's south and east.
Blinken and Austin were scheduled to meet in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, for 90 minutes with Zelenskyy, along with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, U.S. officials said. It wasn't immediately clear whether the visiting Americans held other meetings on the sidelines during their brief foray into the war-ravaged country.
It's typical for war zone trips by U.S. presidents and other high-level officials to be unannounced in advance, lest it make it easier for enemy forces operating in the country to target them.
Blinken and Austin traveled to Poland with small contingents of journalists under ground rules imposed by the United States requiring them not to report on the trip until it was finished. No U.S. journalists accompanied the secretaries on the journey from Poland to Ukraine.
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Reading this piece, I am prouder than ever for my country, in the capable hands of President Biden, his commitment to President Zelensky & Ukraine & his nominating an ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, currently the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, since "The U.S. has not had a Senate-confirmed ambassador to Ukraine since then-President Donald Trump fired Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in 2019.
The committment to walking step for step with Ukraine.
This article reminds us who we are in the world, as the United States of America..
Thank you President Biden
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