President Joe Biden made a surprise visit Monday to Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a gesture of solidarity that comes days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of the country.
Biden delivered remarks and met with Zelensky at Mariinsky Palace to announce an additional half-billion dollars in U.S. assistance and pledged continued American and allied support for the embattled nation.
“One year later, Kyiv stands,” the president said. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”
The 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. Zelenskyy is pressing allies to speed up delivery of pledged weapon systems and is calling on the West to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine — something that Biden to date has declined to do.
Zelenskyy thanked Biden for visiting the country “at a huge moment for Ukraine.”
“This conversation brings us closer to the victory,” Zelenskyy said, praising their negotiations as “very important and crucial.”
Biden’s mission with his visit to Kyiv — and then Warsaw — is to underscore that the United States is prepared to stick with Ukraine “as long as it takes” to repel Russian forces even as public opinion polling suggests that U.S. and allied support for providing weaponry and direct economic assistance has started to soften. For Zelenskyy, the symbolism of having the U.S. president stand side by side with him on Ukrainian land as the anniversary nears is no small thing as he prods the U.S. and European allies to provide more advanced weaponry and to step up the pace of delivery.
The visit also gave 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.
Air raid sirens rang out over the city as he and Zelenskyy were exiting the gold-domed St. Michael’s 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.
The 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’s east, punctuated by cruise missile and drone attacks against military and civilian infrastructure.
Biden on Monday declared that “Putin’s war of conquest is failing.”
“Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided,” the president said. “He thought he could outlast us. I don’t think he’s thinking that right now.”
“[Putin has] just been plain wrong,” Biden added. “One year later, the evidence is right here in this room. We stand here together.”
Though Western surface-to-air missile systems have bolstered Ukraine’s defensives, the visit marked the rare occasion where a U.S. president has traveled to a conflict zone where the U.S. or its allies did not have control over the airspace. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the U.S. had given advance notice of the trip to Moscow to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.
The U.S. military does not have a presence in Ukraine other than a small detachment of Marines guarding the embassy in Kyiv, making Biden’s visit more complicated than other recent visits by prior U.S. leaders to war zones.
In his remarks, Biden recalled how he spoke to Zelenskyy as the invasion was beginning one year ago.
“Russian planes were in the air and tanks were going across your border,” Biden said of the setting of their call. “You told me that you could hear explosions in the background. I’ll never forget that. The world was about to change.”
“You said that you didn’t know when we’d be able to speak again,” the president said. “That dark night one year ago, the world was literally at the time bracing for the fall of Kyiv, perhaps even the end of Ukraine.”
“One year later, Kyiv stands, and Ukraine stands,” Biden declared. “The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.”
Speculation has been building for weeks that Biden would pay a visit to Ukraine around the Feb. 24 anniversary of the Russian invasion. But the White House repeatedly had said that no presidential trip to Ukraine was planned, even after the Poland visit was announced earlier this month.
At the White House, planning for Biden’s visit to Kyiv was tightly held — with a relatively small group of aides briefed on the plans — because of security concerns.
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.
Other western leaders have made the trip to Kyiv since the start of the war.
In June, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi traveled together by night train to Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visited Kyiv in November shortly after taking office.
This is Biden’s first visit to a war zone as president. His recent predecessors, Donald Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, made surprise visits to Afghanistan and Iraq during their presidencies to meet with U.S. troops and those countries’ leaders.
