President Biden met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday, reaffirming his administration’s support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and security and granting Zelensky the in-person meeting at the White House he has awaited since taking office in 2019.
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The meeting offered Biden the opportunity, following his administration’s turbulent withdrawal from Afghanistan, to emphasize a foreign policy priority he often cited as a reason to withdraw troops from the Middle East.
In brief remarks in the Oval Office before the meeting, Biden expressed his desire for a “Europe whole, free and at peace,” and reiterated his opposition to “Russian aggression.”
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Biden also reminisced about a previous visit he had made to Ukraine as vice president, and said he hoped to visit the country again.
Zelensky was expected to use his face time with Biden to seek assurances that the United States remains committed to helping Ukraine ward off aggression from Moscow; press Biden on energy security related to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany; and discuss Ukraine’s aspirations of joining NATO.
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Shortly after he was elected in 2019 on a reform agenda, Zelensky hoped to secure a White House meeting with President Donald Trump in a phone call between the two leaders. That call became the basis for Trump’s first impeachment trial — but the desired Oval Office meeting was never granted.
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Ukraine was a particular obsession for several figures around Trump, including Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who sought evidence that Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was part of a corrupt influence scheme with a Ukrainian energy firm. Giuliani also promoted the false narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, was responsible for election meddling in 2016. A career State Department diplomat, Marie Yovanovitch, was fired from her post as ambassador to Ukraine over those and other baseless suspicions.
The impeachment case against Trump alleged that he threatened to withhold U.S. aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky investigated Hunter Biden. Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
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The United States has pledged more than $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and claimed the Ukrainian region for Moscow. Trump shrugged off the annexation, saying it was settled business by the time he took office, but he disappointed Russian President Vladimir Putin by failing to lift all punitive sanctions imposed over Crimea. A border conflict with Russia has continued in Eastern Ukraine.
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Kyiv views Washington as its most important ally in its drive to reclaim the region, and in its battle against Kremlin-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, which has killed more than 13,000 people to date.
In particular, Ukrainian officials say that without strong American backing, they fear Russia could feel emboldened to increase the level of fighting or stage a further incursion into Ukrainian territory. Hostilities continue at a low level, though casualties continue on a weekly basis.
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In his opening remarks in the Oval Office, Zelensky conveyed his condolences for the 13 U.S. service members killed last week in a terrorist attack on Afghanistan, and thanked Biden for sending his country more than 2 million coronavirus vaccine doses.
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The meeting — which was originally scheduled for Monday but was pushed back two days because of the Afghanistan withdrawal and Hurricane Ida — comes as Biden is eager to reassure the world that the United States is still a reliable and powerful ally, a message to which Zelensky is deeply receptive.
“For Biden, it’s important because he just had a very bad two weeks, dealing with the debacle of our withdrawal in Afghanistan, and for some people that undercut Biden’s reputation as a strong foreign policy leader, so this gives him an opportunity to demonstrate he’s at the top of his game,” said John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former ambassador to Ukraine.
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Zelensky made a heartfelt plea in his opening comments for international help and attention for the war in his country, underscoring his need for U.S. support and aid.
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“We have to focus very much now on the security issues, which are the most important — security in Ukrainian Donbas and in the Ukrainian Crimea occupied by the Russian Federation, security in the Black Sea, and security in the Azov Sea region,” Zelensky said.
Herbst said Zelensky’s nervousness is understandable.
“He’s facing one of the world’s great military powers in a war of aggression, but there’s no doubt in people who look at this seriously that Afghanistan is in any way going to change the U.S. commitment to Ukraine, to our NATO allies, to our partners around the world,” Herbst said. “Zelensky needs to hear the reassuring words from the president and others, and he’s going to be getting those.”
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Biden seemed unlikely to wholly accede to many of Zelensky’s requests. He has made clear he views the Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a fait accompli, and speaking to reporters Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Ukraine still needs to meet several tests before becoming a NATO member, and that the decision is not one the United States can make alone.
Zelensky had hoped to meet with Biden before the U.S. leader sat down with Putin, and Biden’s choice to see Putin for a summit in Geneva in June — relatively early in his first year — was seen in Ukraine as a signal that Biden would not make Ukraine a top priority.
“I don’t want to overly analyze the logistics here, other than to say that we want this meeting to receive the attention that it deserves,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on a phone call Monday.
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The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the White House, said energy, defense and other practical issues would dominate the session.
Biden had been the Obama administration’s point man on Ukraine and a longtime advocate for an expansive U.S. relationship with the country as a bulwark to Russian aggression.
Ahead of the meeting, the Biden administration pledged to provide $60 million in military aid to Ukraine. The notice to Congress this week said the money would go for “critical border security and self-defense” against Russia.
“Russia’s buildup along the Ukrainian border has highlighted capability shortfalls in the Ukrainian military’s ability to defend against a Russian incursion,” the notification said.
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But ahead of the meeting, Zelensky sounded resigned to a lower profile with Western allies than he had hoped.
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Zelensky was expected to raise Afghanistan and the implications for Ukraine. Russia has already signaled that it will seek a larger role in Afghanistan now that the United States is gone, and Zelensky is worried about the extension of Russian influence nearby.
“President Zelensky and Ukraine have gotten as much, if not more, attention from this administration than any other European country,” the official said, including two phone calls between Zelensky and Biden and a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in May.
Zelensky — a former entertainer who rose to prominence in a satirical television show about an unknown who becomes president of Ukraine — is only the second European leader to score a White House invitation, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the official noted.
But beyond the optics of a White House invitation, the Ukrainian leader was looking above all for concrete assurances that U.S. support for his country is not softening.
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This spring, Moscow concentrated troops and equipment in areas close to its border with Ukraine for what it said were military exercises, raising fears of a major escalation. Tensions decreased slightly when some of the soldiers and machinery were withdrawn.
In past months, Zelensky devoted particular diplomatic effort to two areas that he considers to be crucial to his country’s security: obtaining a “road map” for Ukraine’s accession to NATO, and preventing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany from beginning operations.
In both areas, so far, he has been fruitless. Biden previously said “school’s out” on the NATO issue, since Ukraine was still plagued by corruption issues and other factors — a position Psaki reiterated Wednesday. Construction on Nord Stream 2 is nearly complete, seeming to close off the possibility of stopping the project.
But Ukrainian officials say they will continue to push the issue. Yuriy Vitrenko, head of Ukraine’s state gas firm Naftogaz, told Reuters that Kyiv would seek to persuade Washington to reimpose sanctions that it had lifted earlier this year, which had allowed the project to go forward.
Ukraine stands to lose up to $2 billion in transit fees it receives from Moscow for allowing Russian gas to cross its territory on its way to Europe.
Ukraine’s unlikely influence in U.S. domestic politics was also present Wednesday, a specter the White House seemed eager to move past. Psaki was asked by reporters if Hunter Biden’s role in the 2020 presidential campaign — and Trump’s impeachment — factored into the White House’s preparations for the Zelenksy meeting, or if Biden expected to address the dynamic of his son with Zelensky when they met on Wednesday.
“No,” she replied, before quickly moving on to the next question.
David Stern contributed to this report from Kyiv.