Monitoring Desk
KYIV & LONDON: The United States will back Ukraine in its fight against Russia for “as long as it takes”, said US president Joe Biden as he made an unannounced, rather symbolic visit to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv on Monday.
“We have every confidence you are going to continue to prevail,” he said. President Biden’s first trip to Ukraine as president came days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The president said President Putin had been “dead wrong” to think Russia could outlast Ukraine and its Western allies.
President Biden met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the two visited a soldiers’ memorial who have died in the nine years since Russia annexed Crimea and its proxy forces captured parts of the eastern Donbas region, reported BBC News.
US President for Ukraine’s sovereignty
President Joe Biden’s presence was intended to reaffirm America’s “unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, democracy and territorial integrity”, said a White House statement. The New York Times reported that President Biden took a 10-hour train journey from Poland to reach Kyiv.
After the visit, Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, announced a new package of security assistance for Ukraine valued at $450m (£373m), including the Himars rocket system, Javelin missiles, ammunition for howitzers and air surveillance radars. The United States will also provide Kyiv with an extra $10m (£8.3m) in emergency assistance “to keep Ukraine’s energy infrastructure up and running”, said Blinken.
New sanctions against companies and individuals “that are trying to evade or backfill Russia’s war machine” will also be announced later this week.
Ukrainian President Zelensky said: “The results of the visit will surely be seen and surely be reflected on the battlefield in liberating our territories.” He also said that he discussed with the US president the possibility of sending other weapons that so far had not been supplied.
President Zelensky has repeatedly called for F-16 fighter planes, something the United States and other allies have so far not approved.
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Jake Sullivan, the National security adviser – who was among the US president’s entourage – said the United States notified Russia about the trip a few hours before the President’s departure for “deconfliction purposes”. He, however, refused to comment on how Moscow responded to the news. The officials at the White House said planning for the trip had been happening for “months”, and that a final decision to travel was taken on Friday.
In a scene that added drama to the high-profile visit to Ukraine since the war began, air raid sirens wailed while President Joe Biden and President Zelensky were in central Kyiv’s St Michael’s Cathedral. The sirens sound regularly in Kyiv.
While other world leaders have visited Ukraine in 2022, the United States president’s appearance in the capital city during a war in which US soldiers are not fighting is a show of unity at a time when Moscow says Western support for Ukraine is waning. The visit was welcomed by the Ukrainians in Kyiv.
In January, President Biden announced that 31 battle tanks were on their way and the United States would send longer-range missiles. However, there is an increasing political divide in the United States over the amount of aid Kyiv should receive in future.
