United States President Joe Biden will also visit Poland later this week to meet multiple stakeholders in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the White House said on Sunday.
Biden will be traveling to Europe on Wednesday, making his first stop in Belgium’s national capital Brussels and then moving on to Poland.
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Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland, will be having a bilateral meeting with Biden on Friday. The two world leaders are expected to discuss the international community’s response to “the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created”, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday.
Biden also will participate in a European Council summit to discuss the allies’ sanctions on Russia and humanitarian efforts for the millions of Ukraine’s people displaced by Russia’s attacks, Psaki said last week.
The diplomatic tour will focus on urgent talks with NATO and European allies as Russian forces concentrate their fire upon cities and trapped civilians in the Kremlin’s nearly month-old invasion of Ukraine.
Poland, which is Ukraine’s neighbour to the East, has been seeing a large influx of refugees for nearly a month as Russian forces have driven out more than 2 million individuals from Ukraine so far.
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Poland has also been one of the most vocal in asking fellow NATO members to consider getting more involved to rein in the bloodshed.
White House officials said previously that Biden had no plans to travel to Ukraine. Biden and NATO have said repeatedly that while the United States and the military alliance will provide weapons and other defense support to non-NATO member Ukraine, they are determined to avoid any escalation on their side that risks a broader war with Russia, according to reports from Associated Press.