By Evan Vucci, John Leicester, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller -
The Associated Press
President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday to meet with his counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a gesture of solidarity that comes days before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of the country.
Biden delivered a speech and met with Zelensky at the Mariinsky Palace to announce a new $500 million aid package and reassure Ukraine that it stands behind the United States and its allies throughout the conflict.
President Joe Biden shakes hands with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during his surprise visit to kyiv on February 20, 2023.AP
“A year later, kyiv is still standing.
And Ukraine is still standing.
Democracy still stands," Biden stressed.
"When [Russian President Vladimir] Putin launched his invasion almost a year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought it could outlast us. But he was so wrong," Biden said in a message posted on his Twitter social network account.
[A birth, a death and a flight in a Ukrainian town under Russian bombs]
The Ukraine visit comes at a crucial time in the war as Biden tries to keep allies united in their support for Ukraine as the conflict is expected to escalate.
Both sides prepare for spring offensives.
Zelenskyy is pressing allies to speed up delivery of promised weapons systems and is calling on the West to supply fighter jets, something Biden has so far refused to do.
Biden's visit to Kiev - he will later travel to Warsaw, Poland - is intended to highlight that the United States is willing to stay with Ukraine "as long as it takes" to repel Russian forces, even as polls they suggest that US and allied support in the form of weapons and direct economic aid has begun to soften.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy receives Joe Biden at the Mariinsky Palace in kyiv, on February 20, 2023. Evan Vucci / AP
For Zelenskyy, the visit of the president of the United States a few days after commemorating the first anniversary of the Russian invasion is very significant and goes beyond symbolism.
On the other hand, it gives Biden the opportunity to see first-hand the devastation that the Russian invasion has caused in Ukraine.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians have been killed, millions of refugees have fled the war, and Ukraine has suffered tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure damage.
The trip is also an act of defiance to Putin, who expected his army to invade kyiv in a matter of days.
A year later, the Ukrainian capital is still standing and a semblance of normality has returned to the city as fighting has concentrated in the east of the country, punctuated by cruise missile and drone attacks on military and civilian infrastructure. .
[Russia intensifies offensive in Ukraine but its soldiers die at the fastest rate since the beginning of the invasion]
Biden also learned firsthand the terror Ukrainians have lived with for nearly a year, when airstrike sirens blared across the capital just as he and Zelenskyy were leaving a cathedral they visited together.
Looking solemn, they continued undaunted until they stood in front of a wall honoring Ukrainian soldiers killed since 2014.
Although Western surface-to-air missile systems have bolstered Ukraine's defense, rarely has a US president traveled to a conflict zone where the United States or its allies do not have control of the airspace.
It is not known whether the White House gave Russia advance notice of the trip to avoid any miscalculation that could bring the two nuclear-armed nations into direct conflict.
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The US military has no more presence in Ukraine than a small detachment of Marines guarding the embassy in Kiev, making Biden's visit more challenging than recent visits by former US leaders to war zones.
For weeks there had been speculation that Biden would visit Ukraine around February 24, the anniversary of the Russian invasion.
The White House repeatedly insisted that no presidential trip to Ukraine was planned, even after the president's visit to Poland was announced earlier this month.
Biden quietly left Joint Base Andrews near Washington shortly after 4 a.m. Sunday, stopping at Ramstein Air Base in Germany before heading to Ukraine.
Other Western leaders visited kyiv since the start of the war.
[The tanks that the US and Europe will send to Ukraine "are the weapon that can win the war"]
In June, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and then Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi traveled together on an overnight train to the Ukrainian capital to meet with Zelenskyy.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak went to kyiv in November, shortly after taking office.
This is the first time Biden has gone 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 US troops and the leaders of those countries.