Biden visits Ukraine to reaffirm American support
Biden’s three-day visit is his fourth to Kyiv since Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March 2014 and then watched with approval as pro-Kremlin insurgents carved out their own region in the eastern industrial heartland of the ex-Soviet state.
After arriving at around midnight (2200 GMT on Sunday), he is due to meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Monday and deliver a highly anticipated address to parliament the following day.
“We do not know if there is any other historical precedent for a foreign official giving a speech like this,” a senior U.S. administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a teleconference with reporters.
Washington and Kyiv’s EU allies support Ukraine’s view of Russia being an “aggressor” that orchestrated the separatist revolt in reprisal for the February 2014 ousting of a Moscow-backed president — an assertion the Kremlin denies.
Both the U.S. and EU have slapped stiff economic sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and have helped train and equip Ukraine’s dilapidated and underfunded army with defensive equipment such as advanced radar.
Situation Changing
But the situation changed when Russia launched ferocious airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies on Sept. 30.
Washington accused Putin of trying to prop up his most important Middle East ally by targeting Western-backed Syrian rebels instead of IS and other extremists holding parts of Syria and Iraq.
Yet IS’s claim that it downed a Russian airliner carrying 224 holidaymakers and crew from Egypt on Oct. 31 appears to have prompted Moscow to focus more on bombing oil infrastructure and other jihadist targets.
The Nov. 13 Paris attacks further prompted French President Francois Hollande to try to enrol Russia in a “grand coalition” against IS including the U.S. and some European and Arab states.
Hollande’s mission has been treated with caution by the White House and overt fright by Ukraine, a country of about 40 million.
The senior U.S. official said Biden would take extra care to stress that the overtures toward Putin in no way affected the West’s support for Kyiv.
“I think that is going to be a major theme of the trip — that nothing that is going on in the Middle East has changed one iota of our commitment to the Ukrainian people and to their security,” the U.S. official said.