WASHINGTON, April 30. /TASS/. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has told CBS that he will travel to Ukraine next week.
"Secretary of State Blinken tells CBS News he will travel to Ukraine next week amid rising tensions with Russia," broadcasting company journalist Norah O’Donnell wrote in her Twitter account on Thursday.
Simultaneously, CBS aired a fragment of its interview with the top US diplomat where he said that Washington registers that Russia pulled back some of its troops from the Ukrainian border. "There are more forces amassed on the border with Ukraine than any time since 2014 when Russian actually invaded [the country]. <…> What we have seen in the last few days is apparently a decision to pull back some of those forces and we’ve seen some of them in fact start to pull back," Blinken pointed out.
On Monday, the US State Department refused to comment on the report that US President Joe Biden intends to send Blinken to Kiev in May when requested by TASS. The agency also declined to say whether the secretary of state would then fly to Moscow. The State Department is yet to reply to the request to provide details about the planned trip as of Thursday.
According to CNN, Blinken’s visit to Kiev is meant to show NATO allies of the US that Washington is not willing to relax its hawkish policy with regards to Moscow at the possible Russian-American summit which can be held this summer. Biden proposed such a meeting in summer in Europe to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in a phone call on April 13.