Biden meets with Polish president as Russia war in Ukraine dominates agenda

With the warfare in Ukraine showing to have reached a essential juncture, President Biden met together with his counterpart in neighboring Poland on Saturday, promising to guard the nation if Russia spreads its assaults into the jap flanks of NATO territory.

Mutual protection of North Atlantic Treaty Group companions “is a sacred obligation,” Biden repeatedly assured President Andrzej Duda because the pair met in Warsaw, essential “on your freedom and ours.”

Later, Biden received a firsthand glimpse of the warfare’s toll on Poland. Assembly with Ukrainian refugees close to the practice station in Warsaw, he stated he admired their spirit and resilience and branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a “butcher.” Tens of millions of Ukrainians have fled throughout Europe or been displaced inside their nation since Putin launched the invasion Feb. 24.

Russia on Friday introduced the “first section” of its army assault had ended efficiently, saying its forces would now think about its important aim, consolidating management of occupied elements of jap Ukraine. This would possibly signify a cutting down of operations within the face of a failure to advance on key cities — or it could be one other feint by Putin to confuse his adversaries.

As Biden visited Poland, a contemporary volley of explosions was heard on the outskirts of Lviv, in western Ukraine and simply miles from the border with Poland. Black smoke billowed on the horizon. It was not clear what precipitated the blasts.

Earlier, Biden joined U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Protection Lloyd J. Austin III at a session in a Warsaw lodge with prime Ukrainian officers —Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s international minister, and Oleksii Reznikov, the nation’s protection minister.

Poland, a NATO ally of the USA, shares a prolonged border with Ukraine and has been each the most important vacation spot of Ukrainian refugees and a vital hall for assist — together with army help — headed into Ukraine.

There may be deep nervousness in Poland, seat of the Warsaw Pact throughout Soviet domination of Japanese Europe, that the warfare might unfold into its territory.

However Washington, fearing a wider warfare with Russia, has not embraced Polish strategies that a global peacekeeping drive be deployed to Ukraine. And the Biden administration has additionally rejected outright a Polish proposal that Polish MiG-29 fighters be transferred to Ukraine by way of a U.S. airbase in Germany.

Poland has additionally urged that Washington expedite procedures to just accept refugees from Ukraine with households in the USA. The Biden administration now says it’s going to open doorways to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Biden and Duda and their delegations met for a number of hours, discussing the warfare and the refugee disaster, which has seen some 3.7 million Ukrainians flee the nation, an exodus that continues each day and is taken into account the most important refugee inflow in Europe since World Warfare II.

The journey to the Polish capital got here a day after Biden visited U.S. forces within the jap Polish metropolis of Rzeszow, some 45 miles west of the Ukrainian border. Washington has bolstered its forces in Japanese Europe in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In his feedback to troops, Biden talked of a worldwide wrestle between democracies and autocratic forces.

“You’re within the midst of a struggle between democracies and oligarchs,” the president informed members of the U.S. Military’s 82nd Airborne Division. “Is democracy going to prevail and the values we share, or are autocracies going to prevail?”

Throughout a later briefing on the refugee response, Biden stated, “the one most necessary factor that we will do from the outset” to drive Russian President Vladimir Putin to cease the warfare “is preserve the democracies united in our opposition.”

Earlier than going to Poland, Biden conferred with U.S. allies in Brussels, unveiling new sanctions in opposition to Russian officers, amongst different strikes.

The president’s arrival to Poland comes at a vital juncture within the Ukrainian battle, now in its second month. Russian troops blitzed into Ukrainian territory Feb. 24.

Since then, the warfare has advanced right into a grinding and expensive battle by which opposing forces on many fronts seem deadlocked — and, in some circumstances, Ukrainian troops are pushing again their Russian adversaries.

Questions stay about whether or not Russia will now ramp up its offensive all through Ukraine or will focus its efforts on the east and south, the place Russia has had some army success.

In feedback Friday, Sergei Rudskoi, a prime Russian protection ministry official, stated with the “first stage” accomplished, Moscow will think about
the “liberation” of the Donbas, a big stretch of jap Ukraine the place Russia-backed separatists have expanded management because the warfare started. Russian proxies within the Donbas have been battling Ukrainian forces since 2014.

“The fight potential of the armed forces of Ukraine has been considerably diminished,” Rudskoi stated.

That assertion got here as a Russian assault on the capital, Kyiv, seems to have stalled amid fierce Ukrainian resistance.

However Russia depicted the assault on Kyiv not as an try and take the capital, however an effort to tie down Ukrainian forces whereas Russia concentrates on the east.

Western observers see the feedback as a face-saving maneuver for Moscow as its forces have slowed down within the discipline due to army missteps and greater-than-expected Ukrainian resistance. Nonetheless, many additionally warning that Putin has repeatedly lied about his intentions and operations, and the brand new feedback should be seen with skepticism.

Putin has denied from the outset that Russia had goals to occupy Ukrainian territory, saying strikes have been meant to cripple Ukrainian army infrastructure. However his authorities’s assault on Ukrainian cities — together with Kyiv and the jap metropolis of Mariupol, scene of huge devastation — appeared to undercut Putin’s assertions.

Putin has referred to as the warfare a “particular operation” meant each to bolster Russian safety in opposition to NATO encroachment and to guard Russian audio system within the east subjected to “abuse and genocide.” The Ukrainian authorities denies any systemic abuse of Russian audio system within the east or elsewhere in Ukraine.

In current days, Russian shelling has continued in varied areas, together with the outskirts of Kyiv and the northern cities of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second most populous, and Chernihiv.

Authorities in Kyiv have introduced a brand new 35-hour curfew.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko stated the curfew will run from 8 p.m. native time Saturday to 7 a.m. Monday, with native residents allowed to go away their properties solely to get to bomb shelters.

In the meantime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky once more referred to as on different nations to step up humanitarian and army assist to his beleaguered nation.

“They’re destroying our ports,” Zelensky stated in a video tackle Saturday to Qatar’s Doha Discussion board, noting that the warfare had curtailed grain and different exports from Ukraine. “The absence of exports from Ukraine will deal a blow to nations worldwide.”

Occasions workers author Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.