Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal Before Their Meeting

PRIME MINISTER SHMYHAL:  (Via interpreter) Your Excellency Secretary of State, Madam Pritzker, dear colleagues, Your Excellency, Ambassador, first of all I would like to welcome you to Ukraine.  This is your fourth visit over the time of the full-scale invasion.  We appreciate very highly your steadfast support.  Early at our meeting, I would like to express our deepest thanks to the President Biden administration, and to President personally, and to all American people for the strongest possible support that the United States are disbursing to Ukraine in the time of challenges, in the time of the full-fledged, bloody invasion of Russia into Ukraine.

We have received all the necessary packages of assistance, and we have discussed with you the 400 million that you have signed recently, and we are already getting the assistance, which helps us to stop the enemy in the battlefield – not only stop, hold our enemy, but to start to regain our territories.  This is our strategic objective, this is our common goal, and we thank you for this understanding.

I would also like to thank the Congress of the United States for the finalization of a long-awaited package of project assistance to our country.  Indeed this will be of huge help to us both militarily and financially.  To live through this very tough year, on our part, I would like to ascertain you that Ukraine continues its reform agenda, its Euro integration path.  And the European Union adopted the Ukrainian facility plan, which gives us the four-year horizon perspective to communicate with the European Union the 50 billion assistance package, and we hope that in June we can already start negotiation process on the path to the full-fledged membership.

Ukraine plans 233 various reforms which are united under the umbrella of Matrix, and there are seven wide measures that we are to implement this year.  We are well underway and working according to schedule.  We also have annexing joint program with the IMF.  It has been on track and we receive all tranches of assistance.  And this is the benchmark, the most important (inaudible) program for us to ascertain our cooperation with wider set of partners.

We would like to thank you again, Your Excellency, and all your team.  We would like to thank the United States of America.  We are grateful for your visit.  Thank you very much indeed.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, Prime Minister, thank you very much and it’s very good to see you again.  We very much appreciate your work, your leadership, in this critical time.  The United States is determined – determined to help Ukraine succeed, succeed both on the battlefield with victory but also succeed, as we would say, in winning the peace, in building the strongest possible Ukraine, a Ukraine that stands strongly on its own feet militarily but also economically and democratically.  And the work that you’re doing, particularly on the economy with the necessary reforms, is absolutely critical.  It’s critical to attracting the investment of the private sector that’s so necessary, it’s critical to the European Union pathway that you just described, and it’s also critical in terms of our ability to sustain assistance to Ukraine. 

So in each of these areas we appreciate the work that’s being done, and I look forward to discussing that with you and your colleagues.  But I can tell you that, as you mentioned, with the supplementary budget support assistance now arriving in Ukraine, I think it’s further demonstration of the commitment of the United States to a Ukraine that is sovereign, that is independent, and that is a thriving country.  That’s our goal, and we will not stop until we achieve it.  Thank you.