Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy jointly arrived in Kyiv today. Among the items on their agenda is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s demand to use 190-mile range ATACMS missiles against Russia without restriction. The expectation in Washington is that the visit to the White House on Friday, Sept. 13 of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will clinch the deal.
On Sept. 6, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul told Axios journalist Julie Grace Brufke: “I talked to Blinken two days ago, and he is traveling with his counterpart from the U.K. to Kyiv to basically tell them that they will allow them” to hit Russia with ATACMS. McCaul made the same claim to Politico: “[Blinken’s] as supportive as I am [of Ukraine], and he just said, ‘I have some good news. I’m going to Ukraine with my counterpart from the U.K. to talk about ATACMS.’ And what I’ve seen and what I’ve been briefed on, it looks like that’s the message they’re going to give them, that they can use them cross-border. It sounded promising to me.”
Blinken and Lammy today are attending Kyiv’s “Crimean Platform,” a gathering devoted to conquering and occupying Crimea. Their attendance at such a hyperventilating gathering does not signal restraint. Yesterday, in London, Blinken was asked by Sky News whether President Biden would repeal the restrictions on Kyiv’s use of longer-range missiles. He replied: “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.” Bloomberg yesterday quoted Blinken as having “signaled” Washington’s approval. When Biden was asked yesterday about Ukraine’s long-range missile use, he said: “We’re working that out now.”
