Presidential Press Office of Ukraine / AP Updated 0835 GMT (1635 HKT) on April 29, 2022 US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, third from the left, sits next to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as they meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, second from the right, in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday (April 24th). Presidential Press Office of Ukraine / AP US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made an unannounced trip to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Sunday, April 24, where they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pledged US support for the war. Blinken and Austin are high-ranking US officials who have traveled to Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion. They insisted on Monday that Russia had failed in its invasion of Ukraine, and Austin explicitly said the United States wanted to see Russia’s military capabilities weakened. “We want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can no longer do what it did when it invaded Ukraine,” Austin told a news conference in Poland. Blinken told reporters that Russia’s efforts to “subdue Ukraine and gain its independence” “failed.” “We do not know how the rest of this war will turn out, but we know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be much more than Vladimir Putin is on the scene,” he said. Here are some of the stories that made headlines last week, as well as some photos that caught our attention.
