US President rides train from Poland to Kyiv to pay surprise visit to Zelensky and drop off $460 million in new weapons; Russia doesn’t attack
(Originally published Feb. 21 in “What in the World“) If there was any doubt about U.S. President Joe Biden’s commitment to keeping Russia bogged down and bleeding in Ukraine, his surprise visit to Kyiv Monday dispelled it.
After extensive secret planning, Washington cleared the trip with Moscow just hours before his departure by train from Poland so the Russians wouldn’t, you know, accidentally kill him in an air raid while he was there and touch off World War III. Air raid sirens in Kyiv were reportedly triggered by a lone Russian fighter jet taking off from a base in neighboring Belarus, lending dramatic tension to Biden’s visit.
The bravura of the trip is admirable at first blush. Biden is the first U.S. President to visit an active war zone with no U.S. military presence. But his visit isn’t entirely without precedent. His wife, First Lady Jill Biden, ventured a few kilometers into western Ukraine last May. French President Emmanuel Macron journeyed to Kyiv last June with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Britain’s then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson landed in Kyiv the next day, his second visit since the invasion. Johnson visited a third time last August before leaving office, then again in January to get his last stamp and collect his free cup of borscht.
While in Kyiv, Biden announced another $460 million in military aid to Ukraine. Biden still hasn’t approved attack drones, long-range missiles, or F-16 fighter jets. But he has already relented on howitzers, Himars missile launchers, Patriot anti-missile batteries and, more recently, battle tanks. If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited the White House just two months ago, looks carefully around his bathroom, he may discover that Joe left an F-16 flight manual for him to find in there.
A number of questions now face the U.S. in Ukraine beyond the wisdom of letting an 80-year-old become the first President to visit an active war zone with no U.S. troop presence in the middle of an enemy offensive, including: a) whether the weapons being supplied by the U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will reach Ukraine in time to fend off a new Russian offensive, b) whether they will be enough to expel Russian forces once they do arrive, and c) if they are, whether Russian President Vladimir Putin might not respond by deploying nuclear weapons or expanding the war with attacks on other NATO members in the Baltics or Eastern Europe. Washington’s greater confidence in supplying Kyiv with increasingly sophisticated weapons—including the President—suggests it believes Russia is losing the capability to expand the war and that Putin may not be crazy enough after all to risk nuclear annihilation.
That leads to question d) what will happen if and when Russia is finally defeated in Ukraine. Ukraine will apparently be left as one of the most heavily armed nations on the planet, while Russia according to the most pessimistic analyses could face disintegration. Fears of that, combined with paranoia about NATO’s eastward expansion, are apparently helping Putin galvanize domestic support for the war despite widespread opposition. The prospect of being left as the only serious challenge to U.S.-led military and economic hegemony, meanwhile, has certainly given China pause, and is reportedly one reason for its new push to for a peace plan—to keep Russia from bleeding to death in Ukraine.
Russian media were apparently quick to interpret Biden’s visit as proof that Zelensky is Washington’s puppet. But if he manages to convince Biden to give him more weapons capable of launching attacks inside Russia, Zelensky may prove that it was Biden who was his puppet all along.