Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky poses for a picture with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before a meeting, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues, in Kyiv, Ukraine April 24, 2022. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS

The United States will reopen its embassy in Ukraine soon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday after he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv, promising more military aid and hailing the fight against Russia’s invasion.

Both men said the fact they were able to come to Kyiv was proof of Ukraine’s tenacity in forcing Moscow to abandon an assault on the capital last month.

“What you’ve done in repelling the Russians in the battle of Kyiv is extraordinary and inspiring quite frankly to the rest of the world,” Austin told President Volodymyr Zelensky at a meeting overnight after a train journey from Poland. “We are here to support you in any way possible.”

Said Blinken: “The reason we’re back is because of you, because of the extraordinary courage, leadership and success that you’ve had in pushing back this horrific Russian aggression.”

The meeting between the US delegation and Ukraine’s leaders ran for three hours, more than double the allotted time, a US official said.

“In terms of Russia’s war aims, Russia has already failed and Ukraine has already succeeded,” Blinken told a briefing in Poland after returning.

US officials said Austin and Blinken pledged new assistance worth $713 million for Zelenskiy’s government and other countries in the region. An extra $322 million in military aid for Ukraine would take the total US security assistance since the invasion to about $3.7 billion, one official said.

“It will provide support for capabilities Ukraine needs, especially the fight in the Donbas,” the official said. It would also help Ukraine’s armed forces transition to more advanced weapons and air defense systems that were essentially NATO compatible, the official added.

Russia’s ambassador in Washington said Moscow had sent a diplomatic note demanding a halt to US arms shipments to Ukraine.

Russia has always denied intending to overthrow Ukraine’s government. Western countries say that was its aim from the outset but it failed in the face of Ukrainian resistance.

Just weeks ago, Kyiv was a frontline city under curfew and bombardment, with tens of thousands of Russian troops massing on its northern outskirts and residents sheltering from artillery in its metro stations.

Today, the nearest Russian troops are hundreds of miles away, normal life is returning to the capital, Western leaders have been visiting and countries are reopening their embassies.

Blinken said US diplomats would first return to Lviv and should be back in Kyiv within weeks. The White House announced President Joe Biden had nominated Bridget Brink, now US ambassador in Slovakia, to be the new envoy to Kyiv.

But despite Ukraine having repelled the assault on Kyiv, the war is far from over. Russia has regrouped its forces and sent more troops in to eastern Ukraine. Last week it launched a massive assault there in an attempt to capture eastern provinces known as the Donbas.

RAILWAY STATIONS HIT

Five railway stations came under fire in western and central Ukraine on Monday, causing an unspecified number of casualties, Ukrainian television quoted state-run Ukrainian Railways as saying. Oleksander Kamyshin, the company’s chief, said the attacks took place in the space of an hour.

All of the country was placed under an unusually long air raid warning for two hours on Monday morning.

Across the border in Russia’s Bryansk region near eastern Ukraine, authorities were battling a huge blaze at a fuel depot.

Neither side publicly linked the fire to the war, but Russia had accused Ukraine of a helicopter attack in that area last week. Unverified images on the internet showed a sudden explosion, and other images show blazes in two separate locations simultaneously. In the past, Ukraine has declined to comment or denied accusations of cross border strikes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow had thwarted an attempt to assassinate a high profile Russian journalist by Ukrainian agents backed by the West. The FSB security service said it had arrested a group planning to kill Vladimir Solovyov, host of a talk show on Russia’s main state television station and one of the most prominent voices in support of the invasion.

Before the US officials’ visit, Ukraine had drawn up a list of weapons urgently needed from the United States, such as anti-missile systems, anti-aircraft systems, armored vehicles and tanks, Zelensky aide Igor Zhovkva told NBC News on Sunday.

In a daily update on the conflict, Britain’s defense ministry said Russia had made only minor advances in parts of Donbas.

“Without sufficient logistical and combat support enablers in place, Russia has yet to achieve a significant breakthrough,” it said.

WAR GRINDS ON

The relative calm in Kyiv is a contrast with the south and east of the country, where the war grinds on relentlessly.

Some 200 miles southeast of Kyiv, Russian missile strikes on an oil refinery and power plant in Kremenchuk killed one person and wounded seven, the governor of the Poltava region said. Moscow said it had destroyed oil production facilities.

Russia also fired rockets at two towns in the central Vinnytsia region, causing an unspecified number of deaths and injuries, regional Governor Serhiy Borzov reported.

Ukraine’s general staff described Russian shelling and assaults along most of the front in the east, including missile and bomb attacks on a huge steel works in Mariupol where the last Ukrainian defenders are holed up in a city destroyed during two months of Russian siege and bombardment. Moscow said it was opening a humanitarian corridor to let civilians out of the plant; Kyiv said no agreement had been reached.

Moscow, which describes its actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation,” denies targeting civilians.