In a rare joint visit abroad, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and his British counterpart, David Lammy, met with the top leaders of Ukraine in Kyiv on Wednesday to discuss bolstering the Ukrainian military and whether to allow it to use imported long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia.
Mr. Blinken and Mr. Lammy said they had heard views from President Volodymyr Zelensky on Ukraine’s desire to fire missies provided by the United States and Britain at Russian targets well beyond the border between the two warring nations.
They told reporters at a news conference that they would convey what they had heard to President Biden and Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Britain, and that those two leaders would discuss it when they meet in Washington on Friday.
The talks on Wednesday were focused on “the situation on the battlefield, Ukraine’s objectives and what it needs to succeed going forward,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that long-range fire was among the topics. “I’m going to take that discussion back to Washington to brief the president on what I heard,” he said.
“From day one, as you’ve heard me say, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed,” he said.
Mr. Lammy confirmed that the officials had talked about Ukraine using American and British long-range missiles to hit Russia. “We’ve had detailed conversations today with President Zelensky,” he said. “We recognize that Ukraine is on the frontline of the fight for freedom.”
The visit came as the Biden administration struggles to curtail aid to Russia from Iran, North Korea and China, and as the U.S. presidential elections loom over the conflict.
Mr. Blinken alluded to anxieties over the election at the news conference and to the state of aid for Ukraine if Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, were to win in November.
“The bottom line is this: We want Ukraine to win, and we’re fully committed to keep marshaling the support that it needs,” he said. “Support for Ukraine will endure because it doesn’t depend on any one country, any one party, any one election.”
But the United States has been by far the largest provider of military aid to Ukraine. And Mr. Blinken announced additional humanitarian and energy infrastructure aid on Wednesday.
Two air raid sirens sounded in the evening, once as Mr. Blinken and Mr. Lammy met with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, and once at the end of their news conference in the foreign ministry.
After stepping off a private overnight train from Poland in the morning, the top American and British diplomats met throughout the day with military and civilian officials, including Ukraine’s new foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, who was appointed last Thursday by Mr. Zelensky as part of an overhaul of the government’s top ranks.
After 5 p.m., Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Sybiha and four other Ukrainian officials met with Mr. Blinken, Mr. Lammy and their aides at the Mariyinsky Palace, the presidential residence.
Mr. Lammy said it had been well over a decade since the top diplomats from the United States and Britain had traveled together. He added that the governments were determined to address the threat posed to Ukraine by Iran’s shipments of short-range ballistic missiles to Russia, an accusation Mr. Blinken and Mr. Lammy made publicly in London on Tuesday.
At 6:15 local time, the first air raid siren of Mr. Blinken’s trip sounded, with Ukraine’s air force saying it had picked up a missile threat from the north.
Mr. Blinken’s visit came as part of a busy day in the capital for Mr. Zelensky. He also welcomed leaders of Latvia, Lithuania and Croatia, who came to attend the annual Crimea Platform summit, which is dedicated to reversing the illegal annexation of the peninsula by Russia in 2014.
Mr. Zelensky unveiled a memorial commemorating the tragedy that befell the Crimean Tatar people, an ethnic minority repressed by Stalin, who — in a foreshadowing of the Kremlin’s justification for its current war — accused them of being Nazi collaborators and deported them en masse. Thousands died.
“Memory compels us to act,” Mr. Zelensky said, noting that the return of Crimea to Ukraine is a key part of ensuring a lasting peace.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, speaking by video at the summit, said, “The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law.”
The first debate between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris took place in the middle of the night during Mr. Blinken and Mr. Lammy’s train ride. A few passengers on Mr. Blinken’s train stayed up to watch at least the start of the debate, but most scrambled online in the morning to read assessments of the event.
Officials in Ukraine were tracking the debate as well: Mr. Trump, who has expressed admiration for Mr. Putin, has rallied a significant number of Republican politicians to oppose U.S. military aid to Ukraine, while Ms. Harris has vowed to continue supporting the besieged country. Asked during the debate specifically if he wanted Ukraine to win, Mr. Trump delivered a 400-word reply but did not say “yes.”
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has made a surprising incursion into the Russian region Kursk, lifting morale in Ukraine. But that offensive has failed to divert Russian units from their onslaught in eastern Ukraine, where they continue to make small but steady gains.
At the news conference, American and British reporters pressed Mr. Blinken and Mr. Lammy on entreaties from Ukrainian officials for permission for the Ukrainian military to use missiles provided by those nations for strikes deep into Russian territory.
In May, the Biden administration gave Ukraine permission to use U.S. weapons for shorter cross-border attacks against Russian sites that were being used in an offensive against the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. Since then, U.S. officials have allowed the Ukrainian military to make that kind of shorter strike at other places along the border.
On Tuesday, Mr. Lammy called Iran’s ballistic missile shipments to Russia a “significant escalation,” and in Kyiv on Wednesday he said that Britain was joining the United States in imposing sanctions on Iran and Russia. Iranian officials have denied they made any such shipment, and in Moscow on Wednesday, the Kremlin denied it was receiving weaponry from other nations.
Until now, Iran has mainly supplied Russia with drones, while North Korea has provided artillery shells. The Biden administration says Chinese companies are selling factory machine tools and microelectronics to Russia to help it rebuild its arms-production industry.
“We’re seeing this new axis: Russia, Iran, North Korea,” Mr. Lammy said. “We’re urging China not to throw their lot in with this group of renegades.”
Also on Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky attended an international conference on justice, where he said Ukrainian investigators had gathered evidence of 137,000 war crimes committed by Russian forces since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. And he chided Mongolia’s decision to host Mr. Putin recently — the Russian leader’s first trip to a member nation of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest last year — and Brazil’s plans to invite Mr. Putin to a meeting of the Group of 20 later this year.
Those invitations were signs of the degradation of the international system of law, Mr. Zelensky said, and “the demolition of the remaining norm must not be allowed.”
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