Blinken arrives in Kyiv amid U.S.-Ukraine friction over arms restrictions

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 mounted a push to win permission to use long-range U.S. missile systems to strike deep into Russia, despite being rejected last week by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Kyiv’s attempt to sway Biden administration came as Ukraine has faced heavy bombardment from Russia in recent days — especially on its power sector — a situation that Blinken warned ahead of the visit could soon get worse after Iran decided to start shipping short-range ballistic missiles to Russia earlier this month.

The Ukrainian effort is a continuation of a dynamic that has marked relations between Kyiv and Washington since the full-scale Russian invasion, two-and-a-half years ago. Ukraine has pushed for more and better weaponry, while Washington has resisted, fearing escalation with Russia, only to relent later.

With President Joe 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 now, ahead of any possible policy shift should former president Donald Trump regain the White House.

Ukrainians argue that being empowered to use the weaponry against Russian territory would reduce the threat from the Kremlin by forcing it to pull key forces deeper inside its country. But Biden has been cautious, worried that allowing the change could draw the United States more deeply into direct conflict with the Kremlin.

“You’ve seen, again from day one, that we have continuously adjusted and adapted based on the battlefield conditions, based on what Russia was doing in a given place and by given means,” Blinken told reporters before making the trek to Kyiv, which involved a flight to Poland and then an overnight journey by armored train to the Ukrainian capital.

Meeting with Zelensky will give the top U.S. diplomat a chance to hear “exactly how the Ukrainians see their needs in this moment, toward what objectives, and what we can do to support those needs,” Blinken said.

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 into their aggressor since the February 2022 invasion. The Ukrainian move has unsettled many ordinary 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.

Blinken traveled to Ukraine with the new British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who has been in office since his Labour Party took power in July. The U.S. diplomat said that he and Lammy would plan to bring their findings back to their leaders ahead of a Friday meeting in Washington between Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The two leaders will discuss the Ukrainian request, Blinken said. Britain has supplied Ukraine with long-range Storm Shadow missile systems but has contended with the same questions about strikes into Russian territory.

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 of the missiles, and U.S. officials say that the Pentagon’s own stocks are also sufficiently limited that they cannot offer many more to Kyiv.

Ukraine sees “a shortage of [long-range] missiles and cooperation,” Zelensky told senior defense officials, including Austin, at the Friday meeting in Ramstein, Germany. “We think it is wrong that there are such steps. We need to have this long-range capability not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory, so that Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

Zelensky will travel later this month to the United States, where he will attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York. He has said that he hopes to present a “victory plan” to Biden while in the country.