President Joe Biden paid an unexpected visit to Ukraine on Monday to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The travel was conducted as a show of support just days before the country’s invasion by Russia one year ago. In order to offer an additional $500 million in U.S. assistance and to reassure Ukraine of American and allies’ support as the crisis continues, Biden made remarks and met with Zelensky at Mariinsky Palace. “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” Biden said.
The visit to Ukraine comes at a key time in the conflict as Biden seeks to maintain unity among allies in support of Ukraine
The visit to Ukraine comes at a key time in the conflict as Biden seeks to maintain unity among allies in support of Ukraine as the conflict is expected to worsen as both sides get ready for spring offensives. Zelenskyy is urging partners to expedite the delivery of weapon systems they have committed to providing, and he is pleading with the West to send Ukraine fighter jets—something Biden has so far declined to do.
While public opinion polls indicate that U.S. and allied support for providing weaponry and direct economic assistance has started to wane, Biden’s goal with his visit to Kyiv — and then Warsaw — is to emphasize that the United States is prepared to stick with Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel Russian forces. As the anniversary draws closer, Zelenskyy believes that the symbolism of having the American president stand with him on Ukrainian soil as they urge their European and American partners to give more advanced weapons and accelerate the pace of delivery is no little thing.
Millions of refugees have fled the conflict, and thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been murdered
Biden will also have a chance to see firsthand the destruction that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought about. Millions of refugees have fled the conflict, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been murdered, and the country has sustained infrastructure losses worth tens of billions of euros.
Also, the journey represents a show of defiance to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had believed that his army would quickly occupy Kyiv within days. A year later, the battle has largely moved to the country’s east, with occasional cruise missile and drone attacks targeting military and civilian facilities, but the Ukrainian capital still stands and some sense of normalcy has returned to the city.
As he and Zelenskyy left a cathedral they had visited together, air raid sirens wailed over the capital, giving Biden a brief glimpse of the dread that Ukrainians have endured for almost a year. They stood in front of a wall commemorating Ukrainian servicemen lost since 2014, bearing sorrowful expressions.
Biden has visited a conflict area where neither the U.S. nor its allies had control over the skies
Notwithstanding the fact that Western surface-to-air missile systems have improved Ukraine’s defenses, the trip was one of the few times a U.S. president has visited a conflict area where neither the U.S. nor its allies had control over the skies. It wasn’t immediately clear if the U.S. had informed Moscow in advance of the journey to prevent any error that could have brought the two nuclear-armed states into direct conflict.
Other than a tiny Marine unit defending the embassy in Kyiv, the U.S. military is not present in Ukraine, making Biden’s journey more challenging than other recent trips to combat zones by previous U.S. leaders. For several weeks, rumors have been circulating that Biden might visit Ukraine around the anniversary of the Russian invasion on February 24. Yet, even after the travel to Poland was revealed earlier this month, the White House had constantly stated that there was no planned presidential trip to Ukraine. Because of security concerns, only a small number of aides were briefed at the White House about the preparations for Biden’s trip to Kyiv.
Asked by a reporter on Friday if Biden might include stops beyond Poland, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied, “Right now, the trip is going to be in Warsaw.” Moments later — and without prompting — Kirby added, “I said ‘right now.’ The trip will be in — to Warsaw. I didn’t want to make it sound like I was alluding to a change to it. Biden quietly departed from Joint Base Andrews near Washington shortly after 4 a.m. on Sunday, making a stop at Ramstein Air Base in Germany before making his way into Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the war, many representatives of the west have visited Kyiv
Since the beginning of the war, other representatives of the west have visited Kyiv. In order to meet with Zelenskyy, then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron took a night train to Kyiv in June. Shortly after assuming office, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak paid a visit to Kyiv in November.
As president, Biden is making his first trip to a combat area. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, his most recent predecessors, all made unexpected trips to Afghanistan and Iraq when they were presidents in order to meet with US troops and the governments of those nations.