In addition, he told Zelensky that President Biden will nominate Bridget Brink, currently the U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia, to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. He added that U.S. diplomats would soon return to Ukraine and that the U.S. is looking into returning them to Kyiv, where the embassy was closed in February.
“We had an opportunity to demonstrate directly our strong ongoing support for the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people,” Blinken told reporters. “This was, in our judgment, an important moment to be there, to have face-to-face conversations in detail.”
While all these developments are surely welcome to Ukraine, they are not surprising, but the fact that the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State went to Kyiv at this time is somewhat remarkable. it is a testament to the security operation that got two officials, and the necessary communications gear required to keep them connected to critical command and control networks, to Kyiv for the meeting.
The operation remains shrouded in secrecy and considering the troubling possibilities that could have occurred, the contingency planning must have been extreme. What if the train was attacked? How would the wounded be evacuated and the VVIPs secured? How would they be exfiltrated from the country? What force protection was there to make sure such sensitive personnel like the U.S. Secretary of Defense, would not fall into enemy hands, even by complete happenstance? What about if the train broke down? The quick reaction forces on the border had to be elaborate, to say the least, during the window of vulnerability when the two men were in the country.
It's also worth noting that this visit came at a time when Russia was making increasingly bellicose threats over arms shipments to Ukraine from the west, with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov
stating just today that, "NATO, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war."
We will let you know as we find out more about this historic visit.