Just as people were waking up on the east coast, the news broke out that President Joe Biden had arrived in Kyiv on a secret trip to visit Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife. The meeting was fairly brief, and in only a couple of hours (by 7:00 am eastern) Biden had flown out of the Ukrainian capital again. The expected speeches were given, with Biden reaffirming America’s solidarity with Ukraine and promising our continued support of the war effort there. But was this a good idea? Possibly. But it’s complicated. (NY Post)
President Biden has arrived in Ukraine on an unannounced visit, just ahead of the anniversary of the Russian invasion there.
The president made the top-secret visit to Kyiv Monday, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in a show of solidarity as the Ukrainian capital has been threatened by missile attacks from Russian forces.
Biden’s visit, his first since the war broke out, was kept secret.
We’re being told that the President’s advisors had discouraged Biden from making the trip just as they have in the past. There have been Russian missiles falling in Kyiv this week and a worst-case scenario for Biden was clearly on the table. Of course, it’s possible that the White House went through back channels and notified the Kremlin that this would have been a bad time to fire any missiles into the capital city because “bad things might happen” if they were to inadvertently take out the American president. (Not to mention the fact that we would have been stuck with Kamala Harris in charge.)
That’s the primary argument against the trip, but there was also a case to be made in favor of it. It all comes down to the optics. There was no actual logistical reason for the trip just as there wasn’t for any of the other foreign leaders who have visited Zelensky in person. Whatever they had to talk about could have been handled over a video call. But so many other world leaders have gone to Kyiv already that it made Biden look rather timid by comparison. Better late than never, I suppose, and Biden is safely on his way home so the gamble paid off.
So how will Russia react to this? Tim McMillan posted some video of Biden’s arrival this morning along with a prediction that the sight of Biden and Zelensky walking around Kyiv together would “drive Putin crazy.”
Videos showing Biden and Zelensky openly strolling through Kyiv as air raid sirens are going off in the background is going to drive Putin crazy!
— Tim McMillan (@LtTimMcMillan) February 20, 2023
On the plus side, there was no mention made by Joe Biden about the United States sending fighter jets to Ukraine. (Zelensky is still pushing for those.) And there has been absolutely no hint that Russia is considering pulling back out of Ukraine. The fighting in the eastern part of the country over the past week has been horrendous, with both sides taking significant casualties.
There were suggestions made this morning on CNN (without Don Lemon) that the President was heading to Warsaw for another diplomatic stop. But all of the details of the trip are still being kept secret. We should know soon enough, though.
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