Psaki won’t say when Kyiv embassy will reopen as more countries return
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined Monday to commit to a timeframe for reopening the US Embassy in Kyiv after Russian troops retreated from the region of Ukraine’s capital.
“It’s in our interest to have a diplomatic presence on the ground, but that is an assessment made by the State Department, made through the prism of security considerations and sometimes a smaller presence that gets larger, but they are really the appropriate entity to speak to that,” Psaki said at her daily press briefing.
The US Embassy in Kyiv said Feb. 14 — 10 days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — that it would relocate consular services to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. After the invasion began, those operations were relocated to Poland and the Kyiv embassy shut down all operations Feb. 28.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to The Post that a “core team” of US diplomats is still in Poland “and are not currently traveling over the border to Ukraine.”
Within the past week, the Czech, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish governments announced plans to reopen their embassies in Kyiv — as did the European Union’s diplomatic office.
CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins pressed Psaki on Monday for more details on the possible embassy reopening, but Psaki repeated, “I’d point you to the State Department if they have any more specifics they want to outline.”
The press secretary, responding to a question from Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, said President Biden has no plans to visit Ukraine — after the president said during a visit to Poland last month that he wanted to go to the war-torn country, but “they” wouldn’t let him.
“I’m not going to get into private conversations. What I will tell you is we’re not currently planning a trip by the president of the United States to Ukraine,” Psaki said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kyiv on Saturday and toured the formerly besieged city with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The most important thing the United States has done and continues to do is lead the entire global coalition in standing up against Russia and ensuring we are providing military security assistance [to Ukraine] and leading the world in a package of economic sanctions that has had a crippling impact on the Russian economy,” Psaki said.
Presidents sometimes blame subordinates for travel decisions, though the US commander-in-chief has wide latitude to determine where they can go. For example, in 2019, President Donald Trump walked into North Korea at the invitation of dictator Kim Jong Un. However, Trump has also said he wanted to join a mob of his supporters marching on the Capitol last year, “but they wouldn’t let me go,” an apparent reference to the Secret Service. Trump claimed he would have been able to quell the violence of the Capitol riot if he had been there.
Beginning in late March, Russian troops have pulled back from areas around Kyiv in an apparent bid to focus on securing gains in eastern Ukraine, including in the Donbas region and areas north of Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 following a disputed referendum.
