War: Biden meets in Poland with the Ukrainian defense and foreign ministers | International

The President of the United States, Joe Biden, met this Saturday in Warsaw with the Foreign and Defense Ministers of Ukraine, Dmitro Kuleba and Oleksii Réznikov, respectively, in a meeting that did not appear in the program broadcast by the White House. More than a meeting to use, it has been added to the last 40 minutes (according to the White House) of the hour and a half that the meeting that the two Ukrainian ministers had with the US Secretaries of State and Defense, Antony Blinken, lasted. and Lloyd Austin, who accompany him.

After the meeting, the White House has issued a statement in which it ensures that Biden spoke with the two Ukrainian ministers about “future efforts to help Ukraine defend its territory”, without specifying specific measures. In another note, the State Department notes that Blinken and Austin “promised to continue their support in meeting the humanitarian, security, and economic needs” of Ukraine.

On one side of the table was the American representation and on the other, the Ukrainian. Journalists have been able to hear how Kuleba told the US president that he had been able to rest on the train from kyiv to Warsaw because he has learned to “sleep in any circumstance” since the war began. Biden replied that he could also sleep on the trains, because when he was a senator he used them daily to travel between Washington and the state in which he lived, Delaware.

Biden has subsequently met with the Polish president, Andrzej Duda, to whom he has reaffirmed Washington’s “sacred commitment” to the Fifth Article of NATO, which obliges it to help a member state if it is attacked. Both countries belong to the Atlantic Alliance.

Biden then met and took selfies with Ukrainian refugees at the PGE Narodowy soccer stadium, which has been converted into a relief center for those leaving the country. Poland has received 2.2 million of the 3.7 million Ukrainian refugees, according to the latest data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, updated on Friday. He also met organizations involved in the humanitarian response. At around this time, authorities in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv reported that “three powerful explosions” were heard in the vicinity.

At 6:00 p.m., Biden will give a speech in the courtyard of the Royal Palace in Warsaw that his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, has defined as “important”. It will be about “the united efforts of the free world to stand with the people of Ukraine, hold Russia accountable for its brutal war, and defend a future rooted in democratic principles,” according to the White House program. Reznikov has announced on his Twitter account that both he and Kuleba will be there.

On Friday, after landing in the Polish city of Rzeszów, some 80 kilometers from Ukraine, he met with soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Military Division of the US Armed Forces, deployed to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, and dedicated some brief words that anticipate the bases of his speech this Saturday. “You are in the middle of a struggle between democracies and oligarchs,” he said. “What is at stake – and not only in what we are doing here to try to help the Ukrainian people and prevent the massacre from continuing – but beyond, is: what is the freedom of your children and your children going to look like? grandchildren? You are involved in much more than simply whether you can ease the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine.” In his previous stopover, in Brussels, he participated in three summits, of NATO, the G-7 and the EU.

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