KYIV, Ukraine
\nPresident Joe Biden made an unannounced visit Monday to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, a gesture of solidarity that comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion of the country.
\nBiden delivered remarks and met with Zelensky at Mariinsky Palace to announce an additional half-billion dollars in US assistance and to reassure Ukraine of American and allied support as the conflict continues.
\nThe US leader recalled the fears nearly a year ago that Russia\u2019s invasion forces might quickly take the Ukrainian capital. \u201cOne year later, Kyiv stands,\u201d Biden said, jamming his finger for emphasis on his stand decorated with the US and Ukrainian flags. \u201cUkraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.\u201d
\nThe Ukraine visit comes at a crucial moment in the war as Biden looks to keep allies unified in their support for Ukraine as the war is expected to intensify with both sides preparing for spring offensives. Zelensky is pressing allies to speed up delivery of pledged weapon systems and is calling on the West to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine \u2014 something that Biden to date has declined to do.
\nZelensky said he and Biden spoke about \u201clong range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn\u2019t supplied before.\u201d But he did not detail any new commitments.
\nBiden\u2019s mission with his visit to Kyiv \u2014 and then Warsaw \u2014 is to underscore that the United States is prepared to stick with Ukraine \u201cas long as it takes\u201d to repel Russian forces even as public opinion polling suggests that US and allied support for providing weaponry and direct economic assistance has started to soften. For Zelensky, the symbolism of having the US president stand side by side with him on Ukrainian land as the anniversary nears is no small thing as he prods the US and European allies to provide more advanced weaponry and to step up the pace of delivery.
\n\u201cI thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about US support for Ukraine in the war,\u201d Biden said.
\nThe visit also gives Biden an opportunity to get a firsthand look at the devastation the Russian invasion has caused on Ukraine. Thousands of Ukrainian troops and civilians have been killed, millions of refugees have fled the war, and Ukraine has suffered tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure damage.
\nThe trip also marks an act of defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had hoped his military would swiftly overrun Kyiv within days. A year later, the Ukrainian capital stands and a semblance of normalcy has returned to the city as the fighting has concentrated in the country\u2019s east, punctuated by cruise missile and drone attacks against military and civilian infrastructure.
\nBiden, a Democrat, also got a short firsthand taste of the terror that Ukrainians have lived with for close to a year, as air raids sirens howled over the capital just as he and Zelensky were exiting the gold-domed St. Michael\u2019s Cathedral, which they visited together. Looking solemn, they continued unperturbed as they laid a wreath and held a moment of silence at the Wall of Remembrance honoring Ukrainian soldiers killed since 2014.
\nThough Western surface-to-air missile systems have bolstered Ukraine\u2019s defensives, the visit marked the rare occasion where a US president has traveled to a conflict zone where the US or its allies did not have control over the airspace. It wasn\u2019t immediately clear whether the US had given advance notice of the trip to Moscow to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV, Ukraine President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit Monday to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, a gesture of solidarity that comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russia\u2019s invasion of the country. Biden delivered remarks and met with Zelensky at Mariinsky Palace to announce an additional half-billion dollars in US assistance and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-314965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n