US Secretary of State Blinken and his British counterpart Lammy are in Kyiv. A summit of the Crimea Platform has been announced, but the most important topic is long-range weapons for Ukraine.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British counterpart David Lammy have arrived in Kiev for talks – including on the lifting of weapons restrictions for Ukraine. Local media showed the two together arriving at the train station in the Ukrainian capital. Kiev has long demanded that US and British weapons be allowed to be used against targets on Russian territory. Blinken and Lammy are expected to discuss this with President Volodymyr Zelensky and the new Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha, among others.
In the morning, Lammy first met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. “I stressed that we expect permission from Great Britain to strike with long-range weapons on military targets on the territory of our enemy (Russia),” Shmyhal wrote on Telegram after the meeting. The topic of strengthening Ukraine’s air defense was also discussed. The Ukrainian also thanked London for the help it had already provided. Blinken and Lammy were later received together by Sybiha.
Crimea Platform part of the visitor program
The two high-ranking politicians are also expected as guests at the summit of the so-called Crimea Platform. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina and the President of the Czech Senate, Milos Vystrcil, also travelled to Kyiv for the meeting.
In the preparatory program of the summit, Zelenskyy inaugurated a memorial to the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. The head of state recalled the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1944 by the Soviet Union, but also the Russian annexation of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014. “And as a symbol of the fact that tyrants and dictators inevitably lose, we are opening this monument at a time when history repeats itself, when Crimea once again becomes a battlefield for freedom, dignity and the right to live,” said Zelenskyy.
With the Crimea Platform created in 2021, Kyiv wanted to draw more international attention to the situation around the annexed peninsula. Although Ukraine has lost even larger areas since the large-scale Russian invasion, Kyiv continues to insist on the return of Crimea, as Zelenskyy emphasized at the inauguration of the monument.
Missiles are intended to help overcome air superiority
The situation for Kiev remains difficult militarily, especially in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, where Russian troops are advancing ever further. This is partly due to Russia’s continued air superiority. Russian bombers and fighter jets can attack Ukrainian positions from a great distance, as well as cities and important infrastructure facilities, particularly those for energy supplies. Ukraine does not have enough anti-aircraft weapons to be able to intercept all attacks.
That is why Kiev is pushing for the right to fight the Russian Air Force on its own territory. This can only be done efficiently with US and British missiles.
Kremlin assumes US permission for missile strikes against Kiev
The Kremlin assumes that Ukraine will be allowed to carry out this operation against Russian territory. “Most likely, all these decisions have already been made,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian agencies, in light of media reports about discussions on this issue between the US, Great Britain and Ukraine and the simultaneous visit of Blinken and Lammy to Kyiv.
Peskov added that the media is currently creating a mood for the decision that has supposedly already been made. According to Peskov, the West is thus becoming more and more entangled in the conflict. He announced a corresponding reaction from Moscow. He did not give any details. Instead, he once again emphasized the necessity of the war, which Moscow simply calls a “special military operation.”
Moscow launches counterattack in Kursk
According to its own statements, Moscow’s military has begun a counter-offensive in the western Russian region of Kursk to expel the Ukrainian troops that have penetrated there. “The Ukrainian armed forces have been expelled from almost ten villages,” wrote the commander of the Chechen special unit Akhmat, Major General Apti Alaudinov, in his Telegram channel.
He also forwarded a video that purported to show the capture of eight Ukrainian soldiers in the region. The information cannot be independently verified. Alaudinov is also deputy head of the Main Political Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.
At the beginning of August, Ukraine made a surprise advance into the Kursk region. In the course of this offensive, Kiev conquered more than 1,000 square kilometers and captured many Russian soldiers. The aim of the advance was to force Moscow to at least partially withdraw soldiers from the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk in order to cover the Kursk region.
According to military observers, this calculation did not work out. The Russian military leadership did withdraw some units from Ukraine to protect Kursk, but did not weaken its main axis of attack.
Putin does not want to negotiate yet
Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who gave the order for the war of aggression against Ukraine more than two and a half years ago, described the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which for the first time turned Russian territory into a war zone, as a provocation. The attackers would be expelled in any case, he announced. He rejected previous negotiations to end the war. The current Russian counterattack is the first serious attempt by Moscow to expel Ukrainian troops from Kursk.