WARSAW, Poland — More than anything he might say in his speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden demonstrated a personal commitment to Ukraine’s survival when he slipped into the war zone unannounced Monday and put his own safety at risk.
He sought to highlight that commitment — and invoke the importance of that trip — in a speech in Poland on Tuesday.
“There is no sweeter word than freedom, no higher goal than freedom, no higher aspiration than freedom. America knows it, you know it,” Biden said. “Stand with us, we will stand with you. Let us move forward with faith and conviction, commitment to be allies.”
Biden, who is speaking in the gardens of the Royal Castle in Warsaw as the war enters its second year, proclaimed that the United States and its allies remain united in their support for Ukraine’s effort to beat back the Russian invasion.
“Yesterday I had the honor to stand with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv to declare we will keep standing up for these things no matter what,” Biden said.
Aides previewed his speech ahead of time.
“His remarks will speak specifically to the conflict in Ukraine, but they will also speak to the larger contest between those aggressors who are trying to destroy fundamental principles and those democracies who are pulling together to try to uphold them,” Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “You will hear in this speech vintage Joe Biden. The president has believed passionately in the themes he will discuss tonight for decades.”
The speech went through many drafts before reaching its final form, an administration official said. Biden and Sullivan were photographed working on the text as they sat in a train car Monday, riding out of Ukraine and into the secure confines of a neighboring NATO country, Poland.
A running thread was the inability of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the architect of the invasion, to reach any of his goals since the war began, administration officials said. Biden noted that Putin didn’t capture Kyiv, topple Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, divide the West or fracture the NATO military alliance.
“President Putin is confronted with something today he didn’t think was possible a year ago — democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker but autocracies of the world have grown weaker, not stronger,” Biden said.
Biden also addressed the Russian people directly — trying to counter Putin’s insistence that the West is to blame for the war.
“The West was not plotting to attack Russia,” Biden said.
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While not exactly a split-screen moment, Putin gave an address of his own Tuesday morning, blaming the West for provoking the war. He did not mention Biden by name. “They started the war and we are using force to stop it,” Putin said. He called for Russia to suspend participation in the New START Treaty, the nuclear weapons agreement between the two nations.
Ahead of Biden’s remarks, Vice President Kamala Harris previewed the administration’s case against Putin in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
She said that Russia had committed “crimes against humanity” and she sent Putin a stark warning. “I say to all those who have perpetrated these crimes and to their superiors who are complicit in these crimes: You will be held to account,” she said.
Russian forces have struck a maternity hospital in Ukraine and have murdered, tortured, deported and raped civilians in carrying out the war, she said.
“The vice president’s speech was on its own a powerful message heading into an anniversary week about how important it is to stay united about calling out Russia for what they’ve done and they need to be held to account,” the administration official said. “You will see the president expand on that message.”
Biden will also deliver a direct rebuttal to Putin’s claim that the West instigated the conflict. He’ll reiterate a point that the White House has been making for months: If Russia stops fighting, the war will end; if Ukraine stops fighting, it will vanish as a sovereign country.
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“That tells you everything you need to know about who is responsible for this war,” Sullivan said. “This was a war of choice. Putin chose to fight it. He could have chosen not to and he can choose even now to end it, to go home. No one is attacking Russia. There’s an absurdity to the notion that Russia was under some kind of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else.”
The centerpiece of Biden’s three-day trip to the region was his surprise appearance in Kyiv, where he met with Zelenskyy and discussed the next phase of the war.
What made the visit all the more extraordinary was the comparative lack of security for America’s commander-in-chief. When presidents visit war theaters, they normally go to places under the control of U.S. troops. But no American forces are stationed in Ukraine, leaving Biden more exposed.
Ahead of Biden’s arrival in Kyiv, the U.S. gave Russia a heads-up that he’d be coming to avoid any misunderstanding about what the Russians “would be seeing,” Sullivan said. Russia acknowledged receipt of the message but gave no other response, he said.
For all the attention paid to Biden’s foray into Ukraine, his speech could prove historic as the world confronts a 21st century iteration of the Cold War, this time between democratic and authoritarian states.
He caused an uproar last year when he spoke in Poland and ad-libbed a line that suggested he wanted to see Putin deposed: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” he said.
The White House quickly walked back the comment.
This time, the signs point to Biden hewing closely to the final text.
“The president understands that this is a singular moment and he’s going to take advantage of it,” the administration official said.
One audience Biden needs to reach is back home. Polling shows that Americans still largely support Ukraine’s fight, but are less willing to send money and weapons.
“Part of this speech is to an American audience,” said Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland. “Why do we care? We care about Ukraine for the same reason we cared about Europe during World War II. We don’t want dictators rampaging around.”
CORRECTION (Feb. 21, 2023, 8:50 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misspelled the Ukrainian president’s first name. He is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, not Volodymr.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
