BIDEN TO UKRAINE AND POLAND

US President Joe Biden show up in Kyiv on Monday 20 February, 2023, for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago, demonstrating in dramatic personal fashion his commitment to the country and its struggle as the war enters an uncertain new phase.

The highly secretive visit -- which took place as air raid sirens could be heard ringing out around Kyiv while Biden walked alongside President Volodymyr Zelensky around the gold-domed St. Michael's Cathedral -- comes at a critical moment in the 12-month conflict, with Russia preparing for an expected spring offensive and Ukraine hoping to soon retake territory.

Biden announced a half-billion dollars in new assistance, saying the package would include more military equipment, such as artillery ammunition, more javelins and Howitzers. And he said new sanctions would be imposed on Moscow later this week.

Biden-Sign in visitors book

Biden makes speech in Kyiv, Ukraine.

 

Joe Biden is holding talks with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, about the strengthening of Nato’s eastern flank in the face of Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, the White House said.

Biden met Duda at lunchtime on Tuesday before a speech in the evening outside Warsaw’s Royal Castle, his second address there in less than a year, underlining the increasingly close relationship between the US and Poland as the Ukraine war grinds on.

“The United States needs Poland and Nato as much as Poland and Nato need the United States,” the US president said at the start of the meeting.

“Poland has been a critical player,” the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on Tuesday morning after Biden and his team arrived back in Poland from their surprise rail trip to Kyiv. “It has been critical to hosting very large numbers of Ukrainian refugees. It has been a critical logistics hub for military assistance going into Ukraine, and it has been a strong voice as part of a unified western effort to try to ensure that there are no cracks, that the west and that the larger coalition of nations holds together strongly for as long as it takes.”

Last year, Biden gave Poland what it had long requested: a permanent US base on its territory, where US forces now number 10,000. Nato established four new battle groups in south-east Europe, doubling its overall force on the alliance’s eastern flank.

Sullivan said that military deployments would be at the top of the agenda in Biden’s talks with Duda, but he did not specify whether that would involve the announcements of further deployments.

Biden makes speech in Poland