KYIV — Neil Young songs aren’t typically used as tools of diplomacy. Tuesday night in wartime Ukraine’s capital, not long before curfew, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deployed a left-handed guitar in the service of supporting Kyiv in its fight against Russia.
Before Blinken became the top American diplomat, he was a serious rock guitarist — and along with a Ukrainian band, he played “Rockin’ in the Free World,” a 1989 song by Young, the Canadian American musician, for a packed basement music club.
To get to Kyiv, Blinken took a secret plane and a special train that stole through the Ukrainian night. To get to the hidden rock club, he took a flight of stairs down to a basement and hung a right.
“The United States is with you. So much of the world is with you. And they’re fighting, not just for a free Ukraine, but for the free world. And the free world is with you too,” Blinken said before launching into the song with 19.99, a Kyiv punk band.
The crowded club — jammed with a mixture of locals and U.S. diplomats — erupted in applause when Blinken belted out the chorus: “Keep on rockin’ in the free world.”
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Blinken’s trip to the club, Barman Dictat, a music bar in central Kyiv that was built to double as a bunker in case of war, came at the end of a long day of meetings that was capped with a speech that set out Blinken’s vision for what a Ukrainian victory would look like.
That victory would include a firm place in the free world, Blinken said.
Blinken hasn’t played music since Hamas’s attack on Israel in October. The brief concert came as Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, has come under intensified Russian assault in recent days, and as Israel’s war in Gaza continues.
Senior U.S. diplomats felt the music would still drive home the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine in its struggle against the Kremlin, one official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the performance.
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