He hopes that US President Joe Biden will also come to Kiev “as soon as the security situation allows”. He will talk to Austin and Blinken about the “list of weapons needed and speed of delivery”. In the past week, news about arms deliveries has improved, Zelenskyy said.
It was not initially clear how Austin and Blinken would travel to Kiev and how long they would stay there. Austin is expected to attend a Ukraine conference hosted by the US government at the US military base at Ramstein in Rhineland-Palatinate on Tuesday.
Questions to the US Departments of State and Defense about the visit initially went unanswered on Saturday. Visits by a US Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense to a crisis or war zone are often kept secret by the US government due to high security requirements.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday that if a member of the government travels to Ukraine, it will not be disclosed until after arrival for security reasons. Asking for a visit from Biden, she declined. The US government is focused on bringing military equipment into the country, Psaki said. Biden visited Poland in late March and also met with Ukrainian refugees in the east of the country.
Blinken had previously welcomed Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal to Washington and assured him of further US support, the US State Department said. Schmyhal was upbeat during his visit. According to Ukraine, very soon it will be victorious in the war with Russia. “We are absolutely sure that Ukraine will win this war and in a very short time,” Shmyhal told CNN.
At a press conference at the metro station on Saturday, Zelenskyy again mentioned the possibility of breaking off any talks with Russia to end the war. “If our people are annihilated in Mariupol, if a pseudo-referendum on independence is held in Kherson, Ukraine will withdraw from all negotiation processes.” However, he is still willing to negotiate, according to Zelenskyy.
The president also renewed his principled willingness to speak directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the press conference, broadcast live from a subway station, the president sat in a chair on a small stage. The station was illuminated by spotlights and decorated with Ukrainian national flags.
Participants included Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Kyrylo Tymoshenko and Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podoliak. Both participate in negotiations with the Russian delegation. Zelenskyy said he feared no assassination attempt at a meeting in a third country. “As for assassination attempts: I don’t fear them very much, my bodyguard fears them a lot, as does my family.” Metro stations in the center of the Kiev metropolis were designed by the Soviet Union as air-raid shelters in the event of a nuclear war and still serve as shelters for civilians today.
Zelenskyy had previously said in a video speech on Saturday night that Ukraine’s partners would finally deliver the weapons his country had asked for. These would help save the lives of thousands of people.
In his nightly video message, Zelenskyy also reacted to Russia’s specification of its war objectives. The area where Russia must take care of the rights of Russian speakers “is Russia itself”. At the same time, he warned of Russian attacks on other countries. Ukraine is just the beginning, after that Russia wants to conquer other countries. “All people who, like us, believe in the victory of life over death must fight with us. They must help us because we are first in line. And who will be next?” Zelenskyy said in his video message.
He was reacting to statements by a Russian general on Friday that Russia wanted to take not only the entire Donbass region in the east, but also southern Ukraine, including Transnistria, a part of Moldova controlled by pro-Russian separatists. . The Moldovan government expressed concern. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned the Russian ambassador.
According to Zelenskyy, the Azovstal steelworks with the last defenders of the port city of Mariupol is under massive artillery and air attack. “Ukraine cannot currently blockade Mariupol militarily. And the Ukrainian soldiers who are there understand that,” he said. This is the reality.
Meanwhile, the Russian military has announced that it will put its new Sarmat ICBM into service in the fall. It is now about bringing the missile tests to a reasonable conclusion, regulating the ranges and then handing over the Sarmat (NATO codename: SS-X-30 Satan 2) to the military, said Roscosmos space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin, in a TV interview.
Russian leadership accused the US on Saturday of a planned provocation to force Russia to use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. “The staging of the use of weapons of mass destruction serves to accuse Russia of using prohibited weapons to then implement the so-called ‘Syrian scenario’, in which the state in question is economically and politically isolated and also excluded from international organizations such as the UN Security Council will do,” said NBC’s chief of protection troops, Igor Kirillov.
About two months after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, UN Secretary-General António Guterres plans to visit Russia and Ukraine next week. Following a reception by Putin in Moscow on Tuesday, Guterres will travel to Ukraine and meet with President Zelenskyy on Thursday, according to the United Nations in New York.