Putin: "It was they who unleashed the war" 2:14
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Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former producer and correspondent for CNN, is a world affairs columnist.
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(CNN) --
As the world prepares to mark the one-year anniversary of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden made a historic unannounced visit to the embattled nation's capital.
Monday's risky trip to an active war zone was not only a powerful symbol of American support, but an injection of encouragement to a population that has endured devastating Russian attacks on civilian residential buildings, hospitals, schools and the power plants that They provide heat and electricity.
Learn the details of Biden's secret trip to Kyiv to show his full support for Ukraine
"It's unbelievable that at a time like this the president of the United States comes to Kyiv," Andrei Ketov, a 48-year-old Ukrainian serviceman, told CNN.
Biden ready for last symbolic clash with Putin after surprise trip to Ukraine
Biden's visit to Ukraine a year after the start of the biggest war in Europe since World War II underscores the extent to which Russian President Vladimir Putin miscalculated.
Putin not only misjudged Ukraine's determination to resist and his revulsion at his claims that Ukraine is not a real country.
He may have bought into the malicious propaganda from the Kremlin about the weakness of US leadership, which is echoed and amplified by Biden's political enemies.
Together with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden recalled a phone call that the two had "that dark night" a year ago, when the war began.
Zelensky could hear explosions in the background.
The world was preparing for the fall of Kyiv, Biden recalled, "perhaps even the end of Ukraine."
Now, a year later, "Kyiv is still standing and Ukraine is still standing. Democracy is standing," he declared, adding: "The Americans are with you, and the world is with you."
Who could have imagined in 2022, when the situation in Ukraine seemed so desperate that the United States offered to evacuate Zelensky -- and he famously refused -- that a year later the Ukrainian people would put up such strong resistance , and that the West would be so supportive of their efforts?
And that instead of Putin holding a military parade in Kyiv, it would be Biden who would stroll through the streets of the Ukrainian capital, arriving at the ornate Mariinsky Palace, the official residence of the Ukrainian president?
ANALYSIS |
Faint cracks appear in the facade of Putin's government, one year after the invasion of Ukraine
Russian military bloggers were horrified.
An "illustrative humiliation of Russia" is how Russian journalist Sergey Mardan described the moment.
A Telegram account run by Russian service members commented with bitter sarcasm that "we are waiting in the Russian city of Kyiv for the president of the Russian Federation, but not for the (president of) the United States."
Recall that in the first days of the invasion, Ukraine said it had discovered that the Russian forces had brought their full dress uniforms, apparently expecting a victory parade.
Instead, the war has given the world an endless series of surprises.
The Russian army turned out to be much less competent than anyone expected;
Putin was not the genius that many believed.
Zelensky was much more fierce and inspiring than almost any leader of recent times.
NATO was more united and the Europeans more willing to support Ukraine than anyone—including Putin—had anticipated.
"It was they who started the war": Putin addresses the Russian Federal Assembly for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine
And then there is Biden.
It is a curious phenomenon that those who have feared Biden the most have tried to undermine him by claiming that he is weak and incompetent.
Biden is 80 years old and walks with a stiff gait.
But he does not lack courage (raid sirens sounded over Kyiv while Biden was there) and, above all, competence.
It is possible that, under another American president, Russia would have quickly conquered the Ukraine.
Biden minced Putin's strategy to make it look like the war was the result of a Ukrainian provocation, revealing the plan before it was developed.
Next, he brought together the NATO alliance, which had been so badly underestimated by former President Donald Trump.
Perhaps Putin, after observing the divisions exacerbated by Trump's rhetoric, thought that NATO would not support Ukraine.
In fact, Putin could be excused for thinking that the US would not support Ukraine very strongly.
After all, one of America's two major political parties had made Trump their leader.
And Trump -- in one of the sharpest contrasts to Biden -- had toyed with Zelensky's pleas for help.
ANALYSIS |
Biden unifies the Western alliance and gives Zelensky an "iron fist" against Putin
Who can forget the infamous phone call after which Trump was impeached, when Zelensky pleaded with the US president for help in deterring an aggressive Russia?
Trump's response: "I'd like you to do us a favor," trying to pressure Ukraine into launching an investigation against Biden, the candidate Trump viewed as weak, even though he feared her as his most effective opponent.
Now Biden has made it possible for the Ukrainian people to stand strong in the face of a Russian president so obsessed with conquering their neighboring country that he has destroyed Russia's standing in the world, rolled back three decades of progress and seems ready to send a number untold numbers of Russians to die to prevent a democracy from flourishing alongside their autocracy.
A cheerful Zelensky said Biden's visit "brings us closer to victory," adding that it will "reverberate on the battlefield to liberate our territories."
Biden promised continued support from the United States, which is what most Americans want, though support has weakened somewhat.
Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN that bipartisan support for Ukraine "remains very strong."
Of course, some members of the Republican Party criticized Biden for going to Ukraine.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the trip "incredibly insulting," a sign of an "America Last" policy.
And Rep. Scott Perry, at the center of a legal dispute with the Justice Department over his cellphone in the special counsel's Jan. 6 investigation, called it "blatant" that Biden helped Ukraine defend its borders and failed to do so. the same for the United States.
The day after his visit to Kyiv, Biden will deliver a major speech, rallying the world on Ukraine's side, and vowing to continue to help Ukraine defend its independence and democracy, because Ukraine is today the front line in the global contest between democracy and autocracy.
War in Ukraine Joe Biden