Pentagon chief arrives in Kyiv

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived on an unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital on Monday, October 21.

This was reported by CNN, Ukrinform saw.

In Kyiv, Austin will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to discuss Ukraine's weapons needs and how the U.S. can continue to support the Ukrainian military over the next year.

Earlier, Austin expressed confidence that the U.S. and its allies would continue to support Ukraine next year, no matter who comes to power in the U.S.

"I do think allies and partners will continue to rise to the occasion,” he said Sunday night. “And we’ve invested in things that will soon come to fruition, in terms of additional systems like NASAMS (surface-to-air missiles). We made those investments a year and a half, two years ago, and we’ll start to see some of that come to life here soon," he said on Sunday evening on the way to Kyiv.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, last week in Brussels, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, answering a question about further work of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group after the presidential elections in the U.S., stated that the coalition of capabilities, within which Ukraine receives the required weapons to fight off Russian aggression, is very successful and will operate in the long term.