President Joe Biden will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris on Friday as the United States clashes with its ally and with the Kremlin over the decision to let Kyiv strike inside Russia using American weapons.
The meeting in the French capital comes as Kyiv’s military is under pressure from a new Russian offensive in the north and intense attacks in the east, a perilous moment that has seen its leaders push for allies to loosen restrictions on Western weapons.
It also follows the D-Day 80th anniversary events in Normandy, which Zelenskyy attended and where Biden drew parallels between that pivotal battle to free Europe from Nazi domination and Ukraine’s current fight against Russia.
Biden and Zelenzkyy met at the White House in December, when the Ukrainian leader came to lobby Congress to approve new military aid for his struggling troops on the frontlines. But Kyiv has grown frustrated by the pace of military assistance.
It’s expected Biden will announce a package of $225 million in weapons when he meets with Zelenskyy in Paris after French President Emmanuel Macron, who is hosting the two leaders, gave Kyiv his own boost on Thursday.
France will provide its Mirage combat aircraft and train a brigade of Ukrainian soldiers, Macron announced, though details were not immediately clear.
Tensions between Kyiv’s allies and Moscow are at an all-time high after the decision to allow Ukraine limited use of Western-supplied weapons to strike military targets inside Russian border regions.
Despite this shift, Kyiv’s troops remain outnumbered and outgunned, and Zelenskyy is pushing for more.
He has already said the limited loosening of restrictions is not enough, with Ukraine thought to be eager to use other long-range Western weapons to hit deeper inside enemy territory.
The new support for Ukraine has infuriated the Kremlin, however. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday he could deploy arms to countries that could strike the West in response, and said Washington and its partners were wrong to assume he would never use nuclear weapons.
Biden signaled in an interview Thursday that Washington remains cautious, emphasizing that Kyiv still can’t use American weapons to strike deep into Russia to, for example, target Moscow or the Kremlin itself.
But he nonetheless offered his rhetorical backing to Kyiv’s cause, drawing a direct connection with the Allied fight against Adolf Hitler.
Speaking at the D-Day ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery earlier Thursday, Biden called Putin “a tyrant bent on domination.”
“We will not walk away,” he said, speaking of U.S. support for Europe’s present struggle in front of World War II veterans. “Because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated.”
