Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with a delegation of U.S. lawmakers in Singapore on June 1 to discuss further military assistance to Ukraine.
Zelenskiy, who traveled to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, met with the bipartisan group, who are members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee.
"We talked about the frontline situation and military assistance, particularly additional systems and missiles to strengthen our air defense," Zelenskiy said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. "We paid special attention to increasing sanctions against Russia."
The press service of the president's office said that the parties discussed "key areas of further military assistance to Ukraine, in particular, in strengthening air defense with additional systems and missiles."
The delegation of U.S. lawmakers was led by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Mike McCall (Republican-Texas). Representative Gregory Meeks (Democrat-New York), the ranking Democrat on the committee, and two other members also met with Zelenskiy.
"The parties noted the importance of allowing Ukraine to use American weapons to strike military targets on the territory of Russia in the areas bordering the Kharkiv region,” the president's office said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on May 31 that President Joe Biden had given Ukraine the go-ahead to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia for the limited purpose of defending the eastern city of Kharkiv.
Speaking in Prague on May 31 at an informal meeting of NATO-member foreign ministers, Blinken said Ukraine had asked Washington for authorization to use U.S. weapons to strike inside Russia as it tries to defeat Russian troops that began a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Zelenskiy is scheduled to speak on June 2 at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a conference sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He also plans to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for further discussions on support for his embattled country.
After arriving at the conference venue in a motorcade amid heavy security, Zelenskiy said in a statement on X that he had come to gather support from the Asia-Pacific region for a peace summit planned for June 15-16 in Switzerland.
He said he planned to hold several meetings, including with Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, Timor-Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta, and Singaporean investors.
