U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be in Kyiv on July 9 for several hours to meet with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, according to diplomatic sources who spoke on condition of no attribution, since the visit has not been officially announced yet.
Tillerson’s trip to Ukraine, his first as secretary of state, comes after a July 7-8 meeting between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 meetings held in Hamburg, Germany.
Tillerson is expected to brief Poroshenko on the results of the Trump-Putin meeting before traveling on to Turkey for a meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
But also next week, the North Atlantic Council, the policymaking body of the 29-nation NATO military alliance, will be meeting in Kyiv for the first time since 2008.
The official agenda has not been released, but Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is also expected to meet with Poroshenko, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman and members of the Verkhovna Rada. Stoltenberg will also lead a celebration of 20 years of NATO-Ukraine cooperation and help christen a new headquarters for the NATO Representative Office in Ukraine at 4L Ihor Sykorsky Aircraft Designer Street near the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
And then on July 12-13, Ukraine will host the European Union-Ukraine Summit in Kyiv. The agenda will focus on three issues: Russia’s war in eastern Ukraine and illegal annexation fo the Crimean peninsula, Ukraine’s reform process and the broader regional and international situation, according to the EU.
