Planned trip to Poland
Biden visits NATO’s eastern flank
03/21/2022 04:49 am
The news about the US President’s travel plans came as a surprise: Biden wants to continue flying to Poland after his meetings with NATO and the EU on Thursday. The country, which recently caused diplomatic upset with its proposals for the Ukraine war, is feeling the effects of the war in its neighboring country.
US President Joe Biden plans to travel to Warsaw on Friday to hold talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The President will discuss how the United States is responding, alongside our allies and partners, to the humanitarian and human rights crisis sparked by Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war in Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement Sunday evening.
Biden is in Europe anyway: On Thursday he will take part in the summits of NATO, the EU and the G7 countries in Brussels. From there he will travel on to Poland for the bilateral meeting. A video conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is scheduled for Monday to discuss a coordinated response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Irritations about Poland’s proposals
The Polish government caused irritation within NATO last week by proposing an armed “peacekeeping mission” by the defense alliance in the neighboring country. However, the demand was met with skepticism or open rejection within the alliance. Warsaw’s proposal to deliver MiG-29 combat aircraft to Ukraine via the US base in Ramstein in Germany was also rejected in Washington. A direct military confrontation between NATO and the nuclear power Russia is feared.
Poland is directly affected by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, since most of the millions of war refugees first come to the neighboring country. According to the UN, more than two million refugees have arrived in Ukraine from the neighboring country since the start of the war. It is unclear how many of them stayed in Poland and how many have already traveled to other EU countries. At the beginning of March, US Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Poland. At the time, President Duda had appealed to the US government to take in refugees from the country for the duration of the war in Ukraine. The US and other NATO countries have significantly increased their troops stationed in Poland because of the Russian threat.