A few days after one year of the invasion of Ukraine launched by Vladimir Putin, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, assured this Tuesday that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, never!”, in a speech before Hundreds of people in the gardens of the former royal castle in Warsaw. After his surprise trip to Kyiv on Monday, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski, the US president has begun a two-day visit to Poland, also to defend the allied unity in supporting the countries on the eastern flank of the NATO.
“A year ago, the world was preparing for the fall of Kyiv; I can report: Kyiv is strong, Kyiv stands proud, stands tall and most importantly stands free,” Biden told a crowd waving Polish, Ukrainian and American flags. “A year after the bombs started falling and a year after the Russian tanks entered the Ukraine, the country is still independent and free today; from Kherson to Kyiv, that land has been recovered,” said Biden, who recalled that, despite everything, there are still “hard and bitter days” in a contest that almost all the allies assume since it will be long.
Hours earlier, in the morning, Putin had accused the West of stoking a global war to end Russia “forever”, in a state of the nation address to the Russian Parliament, in which he announced that Russia was suspending its participation in START III or New START, the last nuclear disarmament treaty still in force between Russia and the United States.
“The West is not conspiring to attack Russia as Putin has said,” Biden replied in Warsaw, so “the millions of Russian citizens who just want to live in peace with their neighbors are not the enemy.”
The US president put the war in Ukraine in a broader context, alluding to the sovereign values ??of the international order created after World War II and argued that this conflict highlights the struggle between democracies and autocracies that the world is experiencing. “A dictator determined to rebuild an empire can never erode a people’s love for freedom, brutality will never crush the will of those who want to remain free,” insisted Joe Biden, alluding to the tenacious resistance put up by the army and population of Ukraine to the Russian invader.
According to Biden, moreover, “the Atlantic Alliance is stronger than ever.” Vladimir Putin, Biden argued in his speech, “thought autocrats like him are tough and democratic leaders soft; But then he was faced with the iron will of the United States and nations around the world who refuse to accept a world ruled by fear.” And he concluded: “There must be no doubt; our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not split and we will not surrender.”
To reinforce the idea of ??US support for Eastern Europe, Joe Biden will meet this Wednesday in Warsaw with the leaders of the Bucharest Nine (B9), as the group of countries on the eastern flank of NATO is called: Bulgaria, Czech Republic , Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
On Tuesday morning in Warsaw, the US president also met with his Polish counterpart, Andrezj Duda, to discuss a possible US troop surge in Poland as a deterrent response to Putin’s hostility in the region. Poland, which shares a 530-kilometre border with Ukraine, has shown unwavering support for Zelensky and the invaded country since the start of the war, as well as being the country that hosts the most Ukrainian refugees (1.5 million).
The United States had strengthened its military presence on Polish soil as early as last year, when the Russian invasion was perceived as imminent, and currently has some 11,000 soldiers stationed there on a rotating basis, according to US television CBS.
Before the tension between Russia and the West broke out over the Russian war against Ukraine, the US military had some 4,500 soldiers in Poland – both in the NATO scheme and within the bilateral framework – most of them stationed in the west of the country. rotary shape. On Sunday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reiterated in an interview with CBS that his country and the United States are studying how to expand the US military presence on Polish soil.
