Blinken Plays ‘Rockin In The Free World’ In War-Torn Ukraine | The Party at the End of the World

💭 Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in the midst of an unannounced trip to Ukraine, surfaced Tuesday evening at a dive bar in Kyiv, ditching the typical diplomatic uniform for jeans and a black shirt — and a cherry red electric guitar.

“And listen, I know this is a really, really difficult time,” Blinken said from the stage of Barman Dictat, where he was surrounded by the members of 19.99, a local Ukrainian rock band. “Your soldiers, your citizens, particularly in the northeast in Kharkiv, are suffering tremendously. But they need to know, you need to know, 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.”

Notwithstanding an expression of mild self-doubt — “I don’t know if we can pull this off” — Blinken, playing what appeared to be an Epiphone 335, and the band launched into a rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

The top U.S. diplomat, surely the first person in the presidential line of succession to have his own page as a “verified artist” on Spotify, did his part not only on the guitar but as a backup vocalist. He has shown off his musical chops in public at least once before, playing onstage at the State Department last September.

The Kyiv performance put a musical flourish on his message to the war-torn state, hours after unveiling a long-term bilateral security deal with Ukraine and exhorting the embattled society to uproot corruption amid a new Russian offensive.