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WASHINGTON/KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Washington on Wednesday to meet President Joe Biden, address Congress and seek “weapons, weapons and more weapons” in his first overseas trip since Russia invaded Ukraine 300 days ago.
Zelensky said ahead of his visit that it was meant to strengthen Ukraine’s “resilience and defense capabilities” amid repeated Russian missile and drone attacks on the country’s energy and water supplies in the dead of winter.
His political adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the visit showed the high degree of trust between the two countries and offered him the opportunity to explain what weapons Kyiv needed.
“This finally puts an end to the attempts by the Russian side … to prove an allegedly growing cooling in our bilateral relations,” Podolyak told Reuters.
“This, of course, is not even close. The United States unequivocally supports Ukraine.”
Ahead of Zelensky’s arrival, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the United States would provide another $1.85 billion in military aid for Ukraine including a Patriot air defense system to help it ward off barrages of Russian missiles.
“Weapons, weapons and more weapons. It is important to personally explain why we need certain types of weapons,” Podolyak said. “In particular, armored vehicles, the latest missile defense systems and long-range missiles.”
Zelensky has made a point of staying close to his people during the war, with daring trips to battlefronts, countless calls with world leaders and videolink speeches to parliaments and international institutions.
In Washington, he will meet Biden at the White House at 2:30 p.m. (1930 GMT), participate in a joint news conference with the US president and then go to Capitol Hill to address a joint session of the US Senate and House of Representatives.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told MSNBC that diplomacy would be discussed with Zelensky, but the Ukrainian leader would be put under no pressure for peace talks.
Kirby said Washington was seeing no sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin was willing to engage in peacemaking.
“Clearly we’re going to make sure that President Zelensky, when he leaves this country, knows that he’s leaving with the full support of the United States going forward,” Kirby told MSNBC in a separate interview earlier.
Fix problems, Putin tells army
Putin was defiant on Wednesday at an end-of-year meeting of top defense chiefs, saying Russian forces were fighting like heroes in Ukraine, would be equipped with modern weapons and would achieve all Moscow’s goals.
Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 aiming to capture the capital Kyiv in days, a goal that quickly proved out of reach.
Moscow then focused on advancing along eastern and southern fronts but has suffered a string of battlefield defeats since the summer — amid widespread reports of disorganization, poor training and shoddy gear — and on Tuesday Putin conceded that conditions in Russian-held areas were “highly complicated.”
In his remarks on Wednesday, Putin said there were no financial limits on what the government would provide in terms of equipment and hardware, but the army had to learn from and fix the problems it had experienced in Ukraine.
He gave his backing to a plan by his defense minister to boost the size of the armed forces by more than 30 percent to 1.5 million combat personnel. A call-up of 300,000 reservists in September was plagued with problems, with many men physically unfit or too old and lacking basic equipment.
Putin also said he still considered Ukrainians — who have been killed in their tens of thousands, forced to flee in their millions, and seen whole towns and cities destroyed — to be a “brotherly” people.
He blamed the war on “third countries (seeking) the disintegration of the Russian world,” revisiting a familiar theme. The West has rejected this as nonsense, calling Russian actions in Ukraine an imperial-style land grab.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday it saw no chance of peace talks with Kyiv. In a call with reporters, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that continued Western arms supplies to Ukraine would lead to a “deepening” of the conflict.
Zelensky compared to Churchill
The Biden administration has provided about $20 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, including artillery ammunition, munitions for NASAMS air defense systems and for high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS).
Zelensky has repeatedly called on the West to supply more advanced weaponry, ranging from modern battle tanks to missile defense systems.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, likened Zelensky’s quest to Britain’s World War Two leader Winston Churchill, who sought US aid against Nazi Germany.
“Where Winston Churchill stood generations ago, so too President Zelensky stands not just as a president, but also as an ambassador of freedom itself,” the top Senate Democrat said. “Now is not the time…to take our foot off the gas when it comes to helping Ukraine.”
“Fortress Bakhmut”
On Tuesday, Zelensky had made a surprise trip to Bakhmut, an eastern frontline city shattered by months of Russian bombardment. He handed out medals to soldiers and underlining the importance of Bakhmut’s defense against Russia’s stuttering but persistent attempts to capture the city.
In his nightly video address, Zelensky called it a trip to “Fortress Bakhmut” in Donetsk, a province Russia claimed to have annexed in September in a move rejected by most countries as an illegal occupation.
Video footage released on Ukrinform TV, part of Ukraine’s state news agency, showed servicemen in Bakhmut handing Zelensky a Ukrainian flag with their signatures on it.
“We will turn it over to the Congress and to the US president from the guys,” Zelensky said in the video. “We are grateful for the support. But it’s not enough.”