Austin will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov while in Kyiv to discuss Ukraine’s weapons needs and how the US can continue to support the country’s military over the next year, the secretary told a small group of reporters traveling with him to Kyiv on Sunday night, according to CNN.
The secretary’s visit will also serve as a moment for him to “step back” and look at the “arc” of the US-Ukraine relationship over the last two and a half years of war, a senior defense official said.
It will not be a victory lap, however. The Ukrainians are in a “very tough” situation against the Russians heading into winter, the official noted.
That is despite the heavy Western sanctions imposed on Russia’s economy in response to its special military operation, billions of dollars worth of military equipment the US has surged to Ukraine, and the multinational coalitions that the Biden administration rallied from the earliest days of the war to help Ukrainian troops beat back Russian advances.
SD/