US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Photo by Reuters) )
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Ukraine on Wednesday to meet with the countrys president and foreign minister amid American claims that Russia is preparing to invade the neighboring country. Moscow has rejected the accusations.
US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement on Tuesday that Blinken will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba "to reinforce the United States commitment to Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity."
The spokesperson added that Blinken will also discuss "the Departments efforts to plan for contingencies" with the American Embassys staff and their families.
The US secretary of state will later travel to Germany to meet with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and attend a meeting with the Transatlantic QUAD, which includes the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
The State Department spokesperson said that the purpose of the QUAD meeting in Germany is "to discuss recent diplomatic engagements with Russia and joint efforts to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, including Allies and partners readiness to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia."
"The Secretarys travel and consultations are part of the diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the tension caused by Russias military build-up and continued aggression against Ukraine," Price added.
This comes as a number of US war hawks earlier this week also announced they were traveling to Ukraine to meet with Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials.
Senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced their trip on Monday.
Commenting to Press TV, American journalist Don DeBar said, "This is a freaking war party. Senator Shaheen, for example, at a hearing for the US intelligence propaganda outlets under the Broadcast Board of Governors, called Russian news services ‘agencies of propaganda and said their presence in the US market was ‘an act of war, with a body count."
"If Donald Trumps presidency set the standard to allow observers to issue remote diagnoses of mental illness, Shaheen is, to use the appropriate clinical term, a genocidal maniac," he added.
"Or, in plain English, she is out of her freakin mind, seemingly obsessed with making war with Russia. And she is the sanest of that delegation," the analyst noted.
The US senators said they would hold discussions "to reaffirm the US commitment to Ukraine, which continues to face an increasingly belligerent Russia."
The development comes as US intelligence agencies have accused Russia of preparing a false-flag operation to invade Ukraine.
US officials told the media on Friday that American intelligence findings point to Russia laying the groundwork for fabricating a pretext for invasion by blaming Ukraine for preparing an "imminent attack" against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.
"The Russian military plans to begin these activities several weeks before a military invasion, which could begin between mid-January and mid-February," one official told The Hill. "We saw this playbook in 2014 with Crimea."
LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/26219
TAGS:
online news tv
