The US State Department said on Friday that it’s been directly reaching out to every American inside Ukraine that it can possibly contact. This after the US Embassy in past weeks had issued dire alerts that they should make plans to leave – however, which angered Ukraine officials themselves on up to President Zelensky, given the government consistently said there’s no real threat of large-scale invasion.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed in fresh statements that the US has “been in touch from the State Department with every American we can reach.” ZeroHedge reports.
While laying out a “range of ways” that Washington plans to help stranded US nationals – of which there’s believed to be 20,000 to 30,000 there before the start of hostilities – Psaki stuck by prior administration statements that there will be no evacuation inside the country.
“We continue to have the capacity to… help them in a range of ways, even as we don’t have a diplomatic presence in Ukraine,” Psaki said. “We don’t have people in the country right now, obviously, but they are in neighboring countries.”
This includes Poland, where US military members were deployed earlier this month to set up border area logistics to help receive fleeing Americans.
Psaki stressed in her Friday comments that the administration has been “warning for months now about the dire circumstances developing in Ukraine, and conveying very directly to American citizens they should leave.”
Meanwhile there are reports that private US-based organizations are helping in evacuation efforts inside Ukraine, even as official US channels are not active inside.
“Americans in Ukraine are being evacuated out of the war-ravaged nation by a Florida-based nonprofit group as Russian forces target Kiev, officials said,” The New York Post details of one example. “More than 30 Americans had been safely evacuated out of Ukraine’s capital as of early Friday by the Tampa-based Project Dynamo, a spokesman for the group confirmed to The Post.”
Earlier, following a statement by US President Joe Biden urging Americans to leave Ukraine, Vyacheslav Nikonov, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee for International Affairs of the State Duma of Russia, said that “Ukraine is under US external control”.
He wrote about this on his Facebook page.
In addition, Nikonov stressed that there are currently 30,000 Americans in our country.
“This is a very large number. In addition, there are 3,000 American citizens with diplomatic passports in Kiev. These are the people who run Ukraine. Given the scale of arms supplies that have been going to Ukraine in recent weeks” the Russian politician wrote 112 Ukraine reports.