West Steps Up Arms Supply, Trips to Ukraine
LONDON/KIEV (Dispatches) — Britain will provide an extra 1.3 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) in military support to Ukraine to help the country defend against Russian forces, officials said Sunday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. President Joe Biden and leaders from other Group of Seven countries were expected to hold online talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday to discuss further support.
The meeting was partly meant to display unity among Western allies on Victory in Europe Day, which marks Nazi Germany’s surrender in 1945.
The funding, which comes from British government reserves, includes 300 million pounds of military kit promised by Prime Minister Boris Johnson earlier this week, such as radar systems to target Russian artillery, GPS jamming equipment and night vision devices.
Britain’s government said it is the highest rate of UK military spending on a conflict since Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said Johnson will meet with British arms companies later this month to discuss increasing production in response to the demand created by the conflict in Ukraine.
Johnson said Britain’s aid to Ukraine will also help boost the UK defense economy.
Also Sunday, Croatia’s prime minister visited Ukraine following reports that a Croatian citizen fighting in Mariupol was captured by Russian forces.
Plenkovic met with Zelensky and other officials. The delegation included the Croatian ambassador in Ukraine who will remain at the embassy in Kyiv.
Biden’s Wife in Secret Visit to Kiev
Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday, holding a surprise meeting with first lady Olena Zelenska to show U.S. support for the embattled nation as Russia presses its punishing war in the eastern regions.
Biden traveled under the cloak of secrecy, becoming the latest high-profile American to enter Ukraine during its 10-week-old conflict with Russia.
Biden spent about two hours in Ukraine, traveling by vehicle to the town of Uzhhorod, about a 10-minute drive from a Slovakian village that she toured on the border.
President Joe Biden said during his visit to Poland in March that he was disappointed he could not visit Ukraine to see conditions “firsthand” but that he was not allowed, likely due to security reasons.
Biden’s visit follows recent stops in the war-torn country by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress, as well as a joint trip by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin to meet with Zelensky in Kiev.
Her visit was limited to western Ukraine; Russia is concentrating its military power in eastern Ukraine, and she was not in harm’s way. On the same day as Biden’s visit, a Russian bomb allegedly flattened a school in eastern Ukraine that had been sheltering about 90 people in its basement, with dozens feared dead.
The visit by Biden’s wife comes amid concerns being expressed by the U.S. media about his cognitive abilities.
Last month, President Biden in a speech referred to his wife as the vice president in the Obama administration, a post he served in for eight years.
The mixup was among a series of snafus Biden has blundered into recently, including comments the president made in Poland that appeared to condone the idea of regime change to oust President Vladimir Putin.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said in Poland in March as he was finishing up a three-day trip to Europe to rally allies to remain unified against the Russian military operation.
The gaffes have led some Republican lawmakers to suggest that Biden isn’t up to the rigors of the presidency.
Rep. Ronny Jackson, who served as the White House physician during the Trump administration, called on the president to step down.
“Biden isn’t running the country. He’s lost and confused. He’s TOTALLY out of the loop, and when he opens his mouth, he’s constantly ’corrected’ by his staff. He needs to RESIGN,” Jackson posted on Twitter. “We deserve a cognitively capable President!,” he continued.
Jackson was among a host of GOP lawmakers who sent a letter to the White House in February asking the president to submit to a cognitive test.
A Russian newspaper that echoes viewpoints held by the Russian government has taken aim at President Biden, claiming he suffers from dementia.
Komsomolskaya Pravda, a pro-Kremlin newspaper headquartered in Moscow, recently published an article questioning whether Biden is “in his right mind” and listed five examples of “dementia that can be found in the President of the United States.”
Citing the World Health Organization’s definition of dementia, Lyudmila Plotnikova, the author of the article, said Biden is “very elderly” and “too often in the last years of his life he either forgot names and dates, or lost his orientation in space.”
Putin: Victory Will Be Ours
President Putin on Sunday vowed
that “as in 1945, victory will be ours” as he congratulated former Soviet nations on the 77th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II.
“Today, our soldiers, as their ancestors, are fighting side by side to liberate their native land from the Nazi filth with the confidence that, as in 1945, victory will be ours,” said Putin, who sent Russian troops into Ukraine in February.
“Today, it is our common duty to prevent the rebirth of Nazism which caused so much suffering to the peoples of different countries,” said Putin. He added he hoped “new generations may be worthy of the memory of their fathers and grandfathers”.
Putin also made multiple references not just to soldiers but also civilians on the “home front … who smashed Nazism at the cost of countless sacrifices”.
“Sadly, today, Nazism is rearing its head once more,” charged Putin who has insisted that Ukraine is in the grip of fascism and a threat to Russia and the Russian-speaking minority in Ukraine’s east which Moscow claims to be “liberating.”
“Our sacred duty is to hold back the ideological successors of those who were defeated” in World War II, which Moscow dubs “the great patriotic war,” said Putin, as he urged Russians to “take revenge.”
He also said he wished “all Ukraine’s inhabitants a peaceful and just future”.
On Monday, Moscow will officially commemorate victory over Nazi Germany with a giant military parade.