TAKING THE NIGHT TRAIN FROM POLAND: Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Lammy All-Aboard for a Ukraine Propaganda Visit

 

US, UK top diplomats head to Ukraine with eye on weapons

September 10, 2024 11:19 PM

• By Agence France-Presse

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, walk along a platform to board a train at Przemysl railway station, in Poland, Sept. 11, 2024.

Przemysl, Poland —The top U.S. and British diplomats headed together into Ukraine on Wednesday to discuss further easing rules on firing Western weapons into Russia, 

In a rare joint trip, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was taking the train to Kyiv with Foreign Secretary David Lammy, whose 2-month-old Labor government has vowed to keep up Britain's role as a key defender of Ukraine.
The pair, who boarded the train early Wednesday at the Polish border town of Przemysl, are expected to meet in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has kept pressing the West for weapons with more firepower and fewer restrictions.
U.S. President Joe Biden, asked in Washington whether he would let Ukraine use longer-range weapons, said: "We're working that out right now."
Biden, while strongly supportive of Ukraine, has previously made clear he wants to avoid devolving into direct conflict between the United States and Russia, the world's two leading nuclear powers.

• Blinken, speaking Tuesday in London alongside Lammy, said the United States was committed to providing Ukraine "what they need when they need it to be most effective in dealing with the Russian aggression."
• But Blinken, who is on his fifth trip to Kyiv since the war, said it was also important to see if Ukrainian forces could maintain and operate particular weaponry.

Pressed later in an interview with Sky News on whether the United States would green-light long-range weapons, Blinken said, "We never rule out, but when we rule in, we want to make sure it's done in such a way that it can advance what the Ukrainians are trying to achieve. .  ."

British media reports said Biden, who meets Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday, was set to end objections to letting Ukraine fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles into Russia.
Britain has repeatedly pushed the United States, by far Ukraine's biggest military supplier, to be more forward on weapons.

• One key ask of Ukraine is to loosen restrictions on U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS, which can hit targets up to 300 kilometers away.

In a joint letter to Biden, leading members of Congress from the rival Republican Party asked him to act on ATACMS immediately.
"As long as it is conducting its brutal, full-scale war of aggression, Russia must not be given a sanctuary from which it can execute its war crimes against Ukraine with impunity," said the letter signed by Representative Mike McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

• Republicans, however, are deeply divided over Ukraine, and a victory in November by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump over Biden's political heir Kamala Harris could dramatically shift US policy.
• Trump aides have suggested that if he wins, he would leverage aid to force Kyiv into territorial concessions to Russia to end the war.