U.S. set to reopen embassy in Ukraine, appoints ambassador

The United States will reopen its embassy in Ukraine soon, its top diplomat said on Monday after he and the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv.

Blinken promised more military aid and hailed Ukraine’s success in pushing back Russia’s invasion.

Both Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the fact they were able to come to Ukraine’s capital was proof of Ukraine’s tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on Kyiv last month.

“What you’ve done in repelling the Russians in the battle of Kyiv is extraordinary and inspiring quite frankly to the rest of the world,” Austin told President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at a meeting overnight after a train journey from Poland.

“We are here to support you in any way possible.”

Blinken praised Ukraine’s achievement “in pushing back this horrific Russian aggression.”

“In terms of Russia’s war aims, Russia has already failed and Ukraine has already succeeded,” he told a briefing in Poland on their way back from Ukraine.

Austin said: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

The two-month-old war has killed or injured thousands, reduced towns and cities to rubble and sent more than five million people fleeing abroad.

But Russian forces were forced to pull back from the outskirts of Kyiv in the face of stiff Ukrainian resistance and they have yet to capture a major city.

U.S. officials said the two pledged $713 million in new assistance for Ukraine and other countries in the region seen as potentially vulnerable to Russian threats.

An extra $322 million in military aid for Ukraine would take the total U.S. security assistance since the invasion began to about $3.7 billion, one official said.

Blinken said U.S. diplomats would first come to the western city of Lviv and should be back in Kyiv within weeks.

The White House said President Joe Biden had nominated Bridget Brink, now U.S. ambassador in Slovakia, to be the new envoy to Kyiv.

But away from the capital, war rages on in Ukraine’s east and south where Russia last week launched a massive offensive.

Russian forces were continuing on Monday to bomb and shell the vast Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol where Ukrainian fighters are hunkered down in a city ravaged during two months of Russian siege and bombardment, Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said in a video address.