U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Kyiv Sunday to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They vowed to give Ukraine an additional $700 million in military aid. Blinken claimed that Russia is failing in its principal war aims. Defense Secretary Austin said the United States wants to see Russia be “weakened.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. So, it has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of — a lot of its troops, quite frankly. And we want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

During the trip, Secretary of State Blinken announced plans to gradually reopen the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. President Biden is expected to soon name Bridget Brink to be ambassador to Ukraine — a position that has been vacant since 2019. Brink is currently serving as ambassador to Slovakia, a post she began under Donald Trump.