KORCZOWA, Poland — With a line of refugees pouring into Poland behind them, US and Ukrainian diplomats met on Saturday at the border with Ukraine in a brief but extraordinary meeting to assess what additional support and protection the United States could provide to help the Russian invasion, which seemed certain to continue.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba thanked US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken for “literally coming to Ukraine”. The two men stood at the border where, over the course of an hour, hundreds of refugees had entered Poland on foot in frigid temperatures.
For Mr Blinken, the brief meeting was an opportunity to take stock of the humanitarian disaster – Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II – caused by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin during his invasion of Ukraine.
For Mr Kuleba, it was a moment to remind the world again, in stark terms, of the possibility of an ongoing conflict with large numbers of human casualties and the rupture of the world order if foreign aid did not stop what Ukraine demanded.
“Ukraine will win this war,” Mr Kuleba said after the meeting, which was kept secret for several hours after it ended to ensure he could safely travel back to Ukraine. “The question is the price of our victory. And if our partners continue to make bold, systemic decisions to increase economic and political pressure on Russia, if they continue to supply us with the necessary weapons, the price will be lower.”
“This will save a lot of lives in Ukraine, a lot of houses; many children will be born, much suffering will be avoided,” he said. “This is the only question on the agenda.”
Mr Blinken said the Biden administration was seeking at least $2.75 billion in additional humanitarian aid to Ukraine and the countries that have so far taken in more than a million refugees. “We’re stuck with Ukraine — somehow, short-term, medium-term, long-term,” he said, adding that he was “impressed” by Ukraine’s resistance to Moscow’s much larger army.
But Kuleba once again called for NATO forces to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine to protect it from Russian bombing — a move the Biden administration and its allies fear could draw them into a bigger war.
Global pressure on Russia to step down – bolstered by devastating economic sanctions against the government of Putin and its allies and shipments of arms and military equipment to Kiev – “will not only continue, it will increase until this war of choice is brought to an end,” said Mr. Blinken. He said the United States and its allies are “looking at everything again” to support Ukraine.
“The world is here; the world is with you,” Mr. Blinken said to Mr. Kuleba.
In recent days, Mr Blinken has repeatedly pointed to the increasing number of deaths in Ukraine, sometimes in graphic terms, to underline the war for Americans, who may feel largely unaffected by its violence. He witnessed the desperation at the border crossing on Saturday, where the sound of crying babies and truck engines interrupted an otherwise stunned silence among most of the arriving refugees, who shuddered as they were led in small groups by border guards to a processing center just inside Poland.
Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau estimated that as many as one million refugees from Ukraine would have fled to Poland by the end of this weekend. By Saturday afternoon, that number stood at 700,000 and many of those who had fled arrived at the Korczowa-Krakovets intersection. In total, more than 1.3 million refugees have left Ukraine for neighboring countries since Friday.
The line of Ukrainians trudging into Poland included refugees who led children by the hand or carried a lone backpack or suitcase filled with their belongings.
“We walked to the border, I don’t know how many hours,” said a 12-year-old girl, Venera Ahmadi, whose family left Kiev after “we heard bombs” and stayed at a nearby refugee reception center in Korczowa.
“I was afraid I was going to die,” said Venera’s older sister, Jasmine Ahmadi.
Mr Blinken met some of the recent arrivals at the shelter, where they were served hot meals and rested in cots crammed together in a building that had been a shopping center just a week earlier. Mr Rau said there were an estimated 3,000 Ukrainians on Saturday – a number he says is increasing every day.
The latest tranche of humanitarian aid is part of the Biden administration’s $10 billion request to Congress for additional funding for Ukraine.
Arriving in the southeastern Polish town of Rzeszow on Saturday morning, Mr. Blinken greeted Democrats and Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who had also come to gauge what else the United States could offer.
“We are going to do everything we can to help the Ukrainian people,” said Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat and chairman of the committee. The highest-ranking Republican on the panel, Texas Representative Michael McCaul, nodded in agreement.
Since the invasion, Mr Blinken said, the United States has already sent more than $54 million in aid, including: water, 20,000 thermal blankets and healthcare supplies for up to 100,000 people in the next three months.
After meeting Mr Blinken in Rzeszow, Mr Rau said that Russian attacks on civilians and nuclear power plants in Ukraine amounted to war crimes. He demanded that Russia be vigorously prosecuted — and said he had raised the possibility of a joint effort by Poland and the United States to do so. “The pursuit of war criminals is an element of humanity’s common memory,” he told journalists in Rzeszow. “It is our common duty.”
Mr Kuleba said it is not clear which state Ukraine would be in when the fighting ends – whenever that may be – and noted that even limited efforts to secure a ceasefire in at least two Ukrainians cities for humanitarian access had failed.
“But every war ends with diplomacy and with talks, so we have to keep talking,” Kuleba said.
He added: “Thousands of people in Ukraine are sacrificing their lives – men, women, old, young – to defend the country. If we are victorious, and I have no doubt that we will, we will build a new Ukraine. And that country will be even better than the country that Russia destroyed.”