Blinken: US aims to prevent Russia from achieving strategic success in Ukraine

The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the US aims to prevent Russia from achieving strategic success in Ukraine in its aggression.

 “The ultimate objective is two-fold.  The first, of course, is to deny Russia any kind of strategic success in Ukraine, because if we don’t then, as I said, it’s an open invitation for aggressors everywhere,” Caliber.Az quotes Blinken as addressing a briefing on September 13.

According to Blinken, it’s really important to note that Russia has failed in what it was trying to accomplish because its goal was to erase Ukraine from the map, end its identity as an independent country, and subsume it into Russia. 

“That’s already failed. Where exactly it settles, exactly where the lines are drawn – that’s fundamentally up to the Ukrainians.”

He said the US wants to stand with Ukraine to maximize its ability to take back the remaining territory that Russia seized. 

“Russia still controls about 17 per cent of Ukraine. But not only that, to ensure that Ukraine not only survives but also thrives. And that gets into supporting it economically and supporting its democratic emergence,” the US official stressed.

“But the objective is to make sure that Ukraine can stand on its own feet. This is not a recipe for some kind of indefinite support by the entire world to keep Ukraine going. It’s getting Ukraine to a point where militarily, economically, democratically it can stand strongly on its own,” he added.