President Biden plans to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday at a critical juncture in the U.S.-Russia war as the two allies seek ways to turn the tide on the battlefield.
The two presidents will meet in Paris for commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings, which helped turn the tide against Nazi Germany in World War II. Biden will return to Normandy later in the day. Give a speech honoring American soldiers and drawing connections between that ancient war and today’s conflict in Ukraine.
This was the first meeting between the leaders of the United States and Ukraine since December and came just days after Mr. Biden allowed Ukraine The firing into Russian territory using U.S.-supplied weapons was a reversal after more than two years of restrictions aimed at avoiding an escalation of conflict with a nuclear rival.
But Biden has eased only some restrictions, allowing strikes on military targets near the northeastern border to defend Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv. Long-range strikes deep inside Russia remain prohibited.
Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials remain frustrated with Biden’s restraint and seek more freedom from him. Ukrainians are also disappointed that Biden will not attend a peace summit Zelenskiy is organizing in Switzerland on June 15. Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will attend in his place.
While it did not satisfy all of Zelensky’s wishes, Biden’s shift in policy toward using U.S. weapons to strike targets inside Russia — a strategy also endorsed by other NATO countries — sparked a wave of criticism from the United States. President Vladimir V. Putin’s response was predictably scathing. Russia has suggested tit-for-tat retaliatory measures.
Putin told reporters in St. Petersburg this week that the move means Russia has “the right to deploy our same type of weapons to those parts of the world where they can carry out strikes against sensitive facilities of those countries that take such actions against Russia.”
The United States has been Ukraine’s most important arms supplier since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. But Biden has at times been reluctant to provide more advanced weaponry for fear of stoking tensions with Moscow, and House Republican leaders blocked additional military aid for six months, leaving Ukrainian defenders scrambling for ammunition and weapons just as Russia launched its fierce attack.
Congress finally passed $61 billion aid package in April Now weapons are circulating again.
The meeting with Zelenskiy will be the first of two for Biden in the coming days, with Biden also scheduled to meet with the Ukrainian president at a Group of Seven meeting in Italy later next week.
“This is a signal of the depth of our commitment to Ukraine at this critical moment,” Sullivan told reporters this week. “The opportunity for the president and Zelensky to sit down twice will really allow them to discuss in depth the various aspects and issues of the war.”
Biden’s speech Friday afternoon in Normandy aimed to further connect Europe’s struggle to liberate itself from Nazi tyranny to the effort to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression eight decades later, continuing a theme he elaborated at Thursday’s ceremony.
He will speak at Pointe du Hoc, where Army Rangers scaled a 100-foot cliff to destroy a suspected German gun emplacement on D-Day in one of the bravest moments of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Europe.
In doing so, Biden would be following in the footsteps of President Ronald Reagan, who delivered one of the most memorable speeches of his presidency in Pointe du Hoc in 1984 and made a similar defense of American leadership and democracy on the world stage during a period of rising isolationist sentiment at home.
