April 25—The first U.S. administration trip to Kyiv since the February 24 special military operation by Russia occurred yesterday, after which Secretary of State Tony Blink and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the U.S. would provide an additional $650 million in military aid to Ukraine, bringing the total of security aid to $3.7 billion in the last 60 days. Secretary Austin made it clear that the U.S. policy goal is not to achieve a negotiated settlement, but to perpetuate the war in order to “weaken Russia” by bleeding them with unending warfare. Accompanying Blinken and Austin on the trip was the notorious Victoria Nuland, currently Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, who in 2014 orchestrated the Maidan coup d’état in Ukraine, which overthrew the elected President, and brought neo-Nazis into positions of great power in Kyiv.
Blinken further announced that the U.S. would be reopening the American Embassy in Kyiv, and that the new U.S. Ambassador would be Bridget Brink, a Nuland protégé who served under Nuland from 2015-2018 as Senior Advisor and Deputy Assistant Secretary in Assistant Secretary Nuland’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Brink has also held posts at geopolitical flashpoints, including Belgrade, Serbia during 1997-99 (NATO hostilities against Belgrade started in March 1999), and two terms in Tbilisi, (2005-2008)—President Mikheil Saakashvili attacked South Ossetia in 2008—and again as deputy chief of missionin 2011-2014.
The State Department readout explained that the new $650 million in U.S. military aid “will provide support for the capabilities Ukraine needs as Russia’s forces train their focus on the Donbas; this assistance will also help Ukraine’s armed forces transition to more advanced weapons and air defense systems.” Secretary Austin told a press conference today that he and Blinken met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other top officials, and that he had previewed for them the agenda for this week’s Defense Consultative Meeting in Germany. Convened by the United States, the Consultative Meeting will “examine the operational picture on the ground and review near-term Ukrainian defense needs, while providing attendees an opportunity to examine ways in which Ukraine’s longer term national security interests can be best met.”
Austin added: Ukraine could win the war against Russia “if they have the right equipment, the right support,” pledging the U.S. would “do everything we can” to help. “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.”
At the same April 25 session, Blinken also back-engineered Russia’s failures, taking what Russia had not done, identifying that as their goals, and declaring their failure. The Kremlin “has sought as its principal aim to totally subjugate Ukraine” and “take away” the country’s independence. “That has failed.” They “sought to assert the power of its military, its economy,” but the opposite was happening. Hence, since Russia is “failing” in its war aims, that means that “Ukraine is succeeding.”
