US top diplomat Antony Blinken will travel in the coming days to Belgium, Poland, the Baltic states and Moldova to reaffirm Washington’s support for Ukraine, the State Department announced Wednesday.
The trip, from March 3 to 8, “continues extensive consultations and coordination with our NATO Allies and European partners about the Russian Federation’s continued premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified war against Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.
The Secretary of State will first stop in Brussels for meetings with his counterparts from the European Union and NATO countries.
The stop in Chisinau comes as Western leaders have raised concerns that Moscow’s offensive against Kyiv could spread to Moldova, another former Soviet republic landlocked between Romania and Ukraine that is seeing an influx of Ukrainian refugees.
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Moldova is home to the pro-Russian separatist region of Transdniestr. Moldovan President Maia Sandu was elected in 2020 on a pro-Western platform.
Poland, meanwhile, is at the forefront of the effort to host refugees fleeing Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24.
According to the latest assessment published Wednesday by the UN, Poland has taken in more than 450,000 Ukrainians, or 51.9 percent of the total number of refugees who have left Ukraine since then.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said he feared a Russian attack in Poland, Finland or the Baltic states.
NATO has pledged to reinforce its military resources in eastern Europe, particularly in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, as well as Poland and Romania.
AFP