SUNDAY, MARCH 6 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
war in ukraine
specifically, fighter aircraft and
the establishment of a no-fly
zone over Ukraine.
Kuleba thanked Blinken for
coming to the border, and said
that Ukraine would ultimately
prevail over Russia.
“The question is the price, the
price of our victory and if our
partners continue ... to provide
us with necessary weapons, theprice will be lower,” he said.
Kuleba said antitank weapons
and stinger surface-to-air mis-
siles had been extremely helpful
in facing the Kremlin’s attack so
far.
Russian forces have advanced
slowly toward the capital Kyiv
since beginning their assault last
month, but have made more
progress in southern and easternUkraine. But Kuleba, like other
top officials in the government of
President Volodymyr Zelensky,
said more was needed to help
Ukraine fend off attacks from the
air, including fighter jets and air
defense systems.
“If we lose the skies, there will
be much, much more blood on
the ground, and that will be the
blood of civilians,” he said.BY MISSY RYANbrussels — Secretary of State
Antony Blinken met with his
Ukrainian counterpart at the
Poland-Ukraine border on Satur-
day, promising increased Ameri-
can support as Russia presses its
invasion deeper into Ukraine.
In the border town of Korc-
zowa, Poland, Blinken toured a
refugee reception center where
Ukrainians were camped out on
cots with their children and
luggage, and he spoke with Pol-
ish officials managing the crush
of people pouring in from
Ukraine in search of safety.
Blinken spoke with Ukrainian
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba
at the border crossing, where he
cited a surge in outside support
to Ukraine, including a wave of
international sanctions, humani-
tarian aid, and an increasing
flow of weaponry. He said those
steps were already having a dev-
astating effect on Russia.
“That pressure too will not
only continue — it will grow until
this war, this war of choice, is
brought to an end,” he said.
But Blinken, on the second day
of a European tour designed to
illustrate Western unity in the
face of President Vladimir Putin’s
war on Ukraine, stopped short of
promising the additional mili-
tary support that Kuleba and
others in the Kyiv government
have said they urgently need —
Kuleba referenced comments
from NATO officials in Brussels a
day earlier — where Blinken met
on Friday with European leaders
— ruling o ut the e stablishment of
a no-fly z one o ver Ukraine, w hich
alliance officials said would re-
quire NATO aircraft to shoot
down Russian jets and could
thus ignite a NATO-Russia war.
Kuleba said that position was
“a sign of weakness” of the
Western alliance. “It’s Ukraini-
ans, it’s the people of Ukraine,
who will pay the price for the
reluctance of NATO to act,” he
said.
Zelensky made a similar ap-
peal to U.S. lawmakers during a
video call on Saturday. Speaking
after the call, lawmakers said the
Ukrainian leader had asked that
a no-fly zone be established and
that Poland and Romania, both
NATO members, be permitted to
transfer Soviet-era aircraft to
Ukraine.
Putin warned on Saturday that
he would view anyone who at-
tempted to create a no-fly zone
“as participants of the military
conflict.”
Blinken said the U.S. govern-
ment was “looking at every-
thing” but did not commit to
providing aircraft.
“Putin has made a terrible,
terrible, terrible mistake in many
ways. But it starts with the
proposition that somehow
Ukraine doesn’t exist as an inde-pendent country,” Blinken said.
“What Ukrainians are showing
every single day is, of course,
exactly the opposite. And ulti-
mately, their strength, their re-
solve, their determination,
backed by the United States, in
fact by the world, is going to
prevail.”
Referencing the price of victo-
ry that Kuleba mentioned,
Blinken said the United States
wanted “to do everything we can
to make sure that price is as low
as possible and that this hap-
pens as quickly as possible, but
we’re in it with Ukraine one way
or another.”
Earlier in the d ay, Blinken met
with Polish Foreign Minister
Zbigniew Rau, thanking his
country for welcoming hun-
dr eds of thousands of refugees
from Ukraine and for pledging
to increase defense spending.
The United States has doubled
the number of troops it has
stationed in Poland since the
end of January.
Kuleba said his government
would continue to hold talks
with Russia, even though several
rounds conducted since the be-
ginning of hostilities had failed
to yield a deal to end the conflict.
He noted that wars typically end
via negotiations.
“So we have to continue talk-
ing, but we are not going t o these
talks to accept Russian ultima-
tums,” he said.In visit to Ukrainian border, Blinken pledges s upport, but not fighter jets
OLIVIER DOULIERY/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Secretary o f St ate Antony Blinken, center, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba,
second right, after meeting at the Poland-Ukraine border in Korczowa on Saturday.BY JOHN HUDSONThe spokeswoman for the Na-
tional Security Council is leaving
the White House after a year of
handling communications dur-
ing a string of turbulent geopolit-
ical events, including the United
States’ withdrawal from Afghani-
stan, efforts to curb the spread of
new coronavirus variants and
responding to Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine.
Emily Horne, a former career
State Department official, will be
replaced on March 25 by Adri-
enne Watson, a political commu-
nications specialist who worked
for more than four years at the
Democratic National Committee.
Watson joined the National
Security Council last year as the
administration fended off a wave
of criticism for the U.S. with-
drawal from Afghanistan.
“The thing about national se-
curity is a lot of it can be
unpredictable, and Emily served
at a time that was particularly
challenging,” White House press
secretary Jen Psaki said in a
phone call confirming Horne’s
departure.
Psaki said Horne, who held theposition for 13 months, had
planned to stay on for a year at
the outset of her appointment.
One of the riskiest and unor-
thodox bets made during Horne’s
tenure was the White House’s
decision to declassify and dis-
seminate U.S. intelligence about
Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine.
Starting in December, Horne and
other U.S. officials put declassi-
fied materials such as satellite
imagery of troop movements into
the hands of reporters to bolster
White House claims that Moscow
was poised to invade.
The declassified materials putforward by the Biden administra-
tion include an alleged Kremlin
plot to film a fake attack against
Russian-speaking people by
Ukrainian forces complete with
corpses to stand in for victims
and a cast of crisis actors posing
as mourners.
Despite furious retorts by top
Kremlin officials, including Rus-
sian President Vladimir Putin,
that the Biden administration’s
claims were “hysterical” and
wrong, Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine largely followed the
timelin e predicted by the White
House.Though the crisis actor film
never surfaced, the accuracy of
Washington’s central claims were
credited with paving the way for
a united Western response that
included devastating sanctions
and an extraordinary reversal by
allies such as Germany to provide
weapons to Ukraine.
The timing of Horne’s depar-
ture was linked to her desire “to
spend more time with my kinder-
gartner, toddler, and my endless-
ly patient husband,” she said in a
statement.
Horne started working for
President-elect Biden on histransition team, working with
then-nominees Antony Blinken
and Lloyd Austin, picks for secre-
tary of state and secretary of
defense.
Psaki has known Horne for
years and said she had clued her
into the esoteric ways of Foggy
Bottom when she served as State
Department spokeswoman dur-
ing the Obama administration.
She said Watson, whose career
is steeped in politics, would help
the White House explain com-
plex foreign policy topics “in a
way your mother-in-law would
understand.”National Security Council spokeswoman to depart after a lively 13 months
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