U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, arriving for a visit to the homeland of his paternal great-grandfather Meir Blinken, is not expected to make big news in Kyiv on May 6.
But his very presence is welcome to top Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, with whom Blinken will meet. He also will have talks with others — Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba among them — as well as civil society leaders. A 12:30 p.m. press conference is scheduled.
Blinken is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Ukraine since President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20 and the first secretary of state to visit since Mike Pompeo did on Jan. 31, 2020.
Hours after arrival, Blinken met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who released a photo and tweeted: “Glad to welcome @SecBlinken in Kyiv on his first visit to this part of Europe. Strengthening ties between Ukraine and the U.S. as democratic allies in the Central Europe & Black Sea region contributes greatly to security and prosperity of both nations and the Euro-Atlantic area.”
The trip comes on the heels of Vladimir Putin’s menacing troop buildup along Ukraine’s eastern border, amid the Kremlin’s ongoing war — now in its eighth year — which has left 7 percent of Ukrainian territory under Russian control since 2014. Putin pulled back the troops, but not the threats. The intimidating behavior includes the granting of Russian citizenship to 527,000 people in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas in the last two years, giving the Kremlin an easy pretext for a deeper military invasion.
The visit also comes amid a domestic political scandal over the April 28 sacking of Andriy Kobolyev as CEO of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s giant state oil & gas company, and replacement with Yuriy Vitrenko, a veteran of Naftogaz who most recently was serving as acting energy minister. That action was preceded by the government’s firing of the supervisory board to pave the way for the leadership change in the company with $7 billion in revenue last year.
Critics say the sudden change, made by Shmyhal’s government, is an assault on the type of independent corporate governance that the U.S. and other Western countries have long championed for Ukraine. But others say the Naftogaz change should have been expected, considering the company’s $684 million in losses in 2020 and inability to increase oil and gas production.
Blinken was set to arrive late on May 5 from London, where he met with G7 foreign ministers, a gathering where threats from Russia and China featured prominently on the agenda. There, Blinken reaffirmed that the U.S. is “closely watching” Russia’s actions in Ukraine and ready to impose tougher sanctions if the Kremlin takes more aggressive steps against Ukraine.
Some of those tougher actions were signaled recently by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State George Kent. In comments to the Financial Times on May 3 and during an April 28 webinar by the Kyiv Security Forum, he said that sanctioning the holders of dollar-denominated Russian debt will put pressure on the Kremlin by limiting its ability to borrow money at attractive interest rates.
Biden knows Ukraine well from his six trips to the nation as President Barack Obama’s point person and is expected to continue a policy of “tough love” — mixing “unwavering support” for restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity and upholding its sovereignty with admonitions to wage a serious and effective fight against corruption.
In this context, the meeting between Blinken and Zelensky is not expected to be an easy one.
After two years in office, Zelensky has made little headway in delivering promised judicial reform, curbing the influence of oligarchs, or in prosecuting high-level corruption. But Zelensky has taken more vigorous steps recently, including on Feb. 2 banning three TV stations for its Kremlin propaganda. The outlets were controlled by Viktor Medvedchuk, long considered to be one of Putin’s leading agents in Ukraine.
While the West wants to see more progress in establishing the rule of law and battling corruption, Ukraine wants to see more help in prevailing against Russia’s war.
In short, Ukraine wants more of everything — military and financial aid, support for joining the NATO alliance, and tougher sanctions to kill the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline connecting Russia and Germany directly. Once that Baltic Sea route is operational, Russia may stop using Ukraine to transit gas altogether, after a current agreement expires in 2024.
The Biden administration has so far decided not to impose sanctions against non-Russian firms involved in the construction, including German ones, as it seeks to build closer ties to Berlin. But it hasn’t ruled out the possibility, even as the pipeline nears completion within a matter of months, according to Nord Stream 2 officials.
“I made it clear that firms engaged in pipeline construction risk U.S. sanctions. The pipeline divides Europe, it exposes Ukraine and central Europe to Russian manipulation and coercion, it goes against Europe’s own stated energy goals,” Blinken said on March 24.
Yet, after a May 4 meeting between Blinken and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on May 4, the US simply reaffirmed “strong opposition” to the project and, disappointingly for Ukraine, made no mention of sanctions.
With all visible signals pointing to no Blinken announcement of tougher sanctions against Russia or increased aid to Ukraine, symbolism and a reaffirmation of bilateral ties are expected to be the major accomplishments of the visit.
Part of that symbolism is sure to include the honoring of Blinken’s ancestral roots in Ukraine. His great-grandfather, Meir Blinken, was an acclaimed Yiddish writer, dubbed by one Jewish life magazine “the Kurt Cobain of Yiddish lit,” was born in 1879 in Pereiaslav, 90 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, now home to 27,000 people. He emigrated to New York in 1904, at the age of 25, and died at the age of 35 in 1915.
