U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that American weapons being delivered to Kyiv were helping stabilise the front line in Ukraine amid intensifying Russian attacks and that Washington would "adapt and adjust" its support.
The top U.S. diplomat travelled to the Moldovan capital Chisinau, holding talks with pro-Western President Maia Sandu on the first stop of a brief European tour aimed at solidifying support for Kyiv among NATO allies and neighbouring countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned of the threat of a global conflict if Kyiv's Western allies allow it to use weapons they have supplied to strike inside Russia, something Ukraine's government is urging its partners to permit.
The U.S. has said it does not encourage or enable the use of U.S. weapons for direct attacks on Russia, but Blinken said it would "adjust and adapt", when asked at a press conference about Washington's current position on the matter.
"I think what you've seen over the two plus years, as the nature of the battlefield has changed, as the locations, the means that Russia is employing changed, we've adapted and adjusted to that ... That's exactly what we'll do going forward," he said.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby also noted that U.S. support for Ukraine has evolved with battlefield conditions.
"And that's not going to change," he told reporters in Washington. "But, right now, there's also no change to our policy."
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged members of the Western military alliance this week to lift restrictions on the use of their weapons to allow Ukraine to strike "legitimate military targets" inside Russia.
The U.S., which is Kyiv's most important supplier of weaponry, passed a $61 billion aid package in April following months of delay that exacerbated shortages of artillery shells.
Blinken said the U.S. weapons supplies were now having a "real effect" and that Putin had not been able to achieve his goals in the Kharkiv area in northeastern Ukraine where Russian forces launched an offensive this month, opening a new front.
"On the contrary, I think what we see, again, stabilisation of the front and a failure in terms of Putin's objectives," he said.
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