Blinken tries to boost spirits in Kyiv as Russia advances on Kharkiv
The US secretary of state arrived in Kyiv yesterday to deliver the message that Washington remains committed to supporting Ukraine as the country’s forces face their toughest situation on the battlefield for many months.
In recent days, Russia has launched an offensive in the north-eastern Kharkiv region, forcing thousands to flee their homes, and yesterday hit the centre of Kharkiv, the country’s second biggest city, with airstrikes, local officials said.
Antony Blinken’s visit came three weeks after Joe Biden signed a $60bn (£48bn) aid package for Ukraine, after months of blocking by elements of the Republican party. Ukrainian officials have said that the delay in US weapons had made a difficult situation at the front even worse.
“We know this is a challenging time,” said Blinken before a meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “The assistance is now on the way, some of it has already arrived and more of it will be arriving … And that’s going to make a real difference against the ongoing Russian aggression on the battlefield.”
Zelenskiy thanked Blinken for the US assistance, but said air defence remained the “biggest problem” for Ukraine. He asked for two new Patriot batteries for the Kharkiv region. Just hours later, residential buildings were hit in central Kharkiv. Local officials said 16 people had been injured, including three children.
The new Russian offensive in the surrounding region risks putting Kharkiv back within Russian artillery range for the first time since 2022.
Over the past few days, Russia has seized villages and is now focused on the town of Vovchansk, which had a pre-war population of about 17,000. Vovchansk was occupied by Russia in 2022, and if it fell to the Russians it would be the first town previously liberated by Ukrainian forces to come under renewed occupation.
Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said Russian shelling had killed two people in Vovchansk yesterday. Thousands of people have fled their homes in the past few days from Vovchansk and the surrounding area, citing an intensity of attacks greater than anything they had previously experienced.
“For five days we never left the house, we didn’t see anyone, we were so afraid to go out we never even opened the door,” Natalia Yurchenko, who had just left Vovchansk, told Reuters.
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, said he believed his country’s forces had been able to stabilise the situation and halt a further advance. “The enemy is, in principle, already blocked at the lines that it was able to reach,” Budanov said in televised comments.
“Kharkiv is not the priority front for the Russians,” added Serhii Kuzan, director of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre in Kyiv. He said the main goal of Russia’s
moves was to stretch Ukraine’s forces on other parts of the frontline, with a view to taking territory in the Donbas region, particularly around the town of Chasiv Yar.
Kuzan said the delay in the arrival of US military aid had led to “direct consequences” on the battlefield in recent months. “At the front, the guys have been saying that they can see the Russians, they could target them, but they have nothing to hit them with,” he said. “It’s an incredibly demoralising factor.”
The Russian push in Kharkiv region has stretched Ukraine’s already weary forces further, as the country also launches a new mobilisation drive to fill its depleted ranks at the frontline.
Ukrainian officials describe the current moment on the battlefield as critical, said David Lammy, Britain’s shadow foreign secretary, after a series of meetings with top officials in Kyiv.
“Clearly now that there is a full complement of aid from the United States and from the EU and from [the UK], they are in a stronger position, but they are not where they would have liked to have been had there not been the delays, and therefore the immediate months are tough,” said Lammy in an interview with the Guardian in Kyiv.
Lammy travelled to Ukraine with the shadow defence secretary, John Healey, to offer assurances to Ukrainian officials that a potential future Labour government would continue to support Ukraine and be committed to keeping a recently made government pledge to spend £3bn a year.
“From the start, the government has had the fullest Labour support for all the military support we’ve provided to Ukraine,” said Healey. “We fully back the increase in funding for Ukraine for this year and the years ahead, and that’s a commitment we wanted the Ukrainians to hear from us, ahead of the election.”
While British support for Ukraine reaches across parties, there is more doubt about how a potential change of president in the US might affect Washington’s position.
Blinken came to Kyiv with a message that the US is in it for the long haul, though many in Kyiv wonder how things could change should Donald Trump return to the presidency.
As well as meeting Zelenskiy, Blinken visited a Kyiv pizza restaurant run by military veterans together with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.
Last night he also visited Barman Dictat, a speakeasy-style bar in central Kyiv, and joined Ukrainian band 19.99 on stage, playing guitar in a rendition of Neil Young’s song Rockin’ in the Free World, released in 1989 prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Before playing, he said: “Your soldiers, your citizens – particularly in the northeast, in Kharkiv – are suffering tremendously. But they need to know, you need to know, the United States is with you, so much of the world is with you and they’re fighting not just for a free Ukraine, but for the free world. And the free world is with you, too.”
On social media, some Ukrainians criticised the optics of performing in a bar while the situation at the front was so tense, while others praised the sentiment.