Putin to give big speech on war in Ukraine after Biden’s visit to Kyiv

By Pavel Polityuk and Max Hunder

KIEV, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to deliver a speech on Tuesday outlining his goals for the second year of his invasion of Ukraine, a day after U.S. President Joe Biden took to the streets of Kiev promising to be together. with Ukraine for as long as necessary.

After his surprise visit to Kyiv, Biden flew to Poland and will deliver a speech on Tuesday about how the United States has helped unite the world in support of Ukraine and underscore American support for the eastern flank of the EU. NATO.

Biden, in his trademark aviator sunglasses, and President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a green combat uniform, marched side by side toward a gold-domed cathedral in Kyiv on a bright winter Monday morning, pierced by the sound of anti-aircraft sirens.

“When Putin launched his invasion almost a year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided. He thought it might outlast us. But he was wrong,” Biden said.

“The cost Ukraine has had to pay is extraordinarily high. The sacrifices have been too great… We know difficult days, weeks and years will come.”

Outside the cathedral, burnt-out Russian tanks are a symbol of Moscow’s failed assault on the capital at the start of its invasion, which began on February 24. His forces quickly reached the vicinity of kyiv, but were driven back by surprisingly fierce resistance.

Since then, the Russian war has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers on both sides, some cities have been reduced to rubble and millions of refugees have fled. Russia claims to have annexed nearly a fifth of Ukraine, while the West has pledged tens of billions of dollars in military aid to kyiv.

“This visit by the President of the United States to Ukraine, the first in 15 years, is the largest in the history of U.S.-Ukrainian relations,” Zelensky said.

Biden traveled to the Ukrainian capital by overnight train from Poland, arriving after around 10 a.m. at 8 a.m. Monday, and returned the same way, leaving shortly after 1 p.m. (1100 GMT), according to a report by the group of the White House. prepared by a Wall Street Journal reporter.

Biden arrived in Warsaw on Monday evening, where he is due to meet Polish President Andrzej Duda the next day, as well as other leaders of NATO’s eastern flank countries.

While Biden was in Kyiv, the State Department announced $460 million in additional aid to Ukraine, including $450 million in artillery munitions, anti-armour systems and air defense radars, and $10 million in dollars for energy infrastructure.

Russia was briefed before Biden left, senior officials in Washington and Moscow said, apparently to avoid the risk of an attack on kyiv while he was there.

“Of course, for the Kremlin, this will be seen as further proof that the United States has bet on Russia’s strategic defeat in the war and that the war itself has irrevocably turned into a war between Russia and the West,” Tatiana Stanovaya said. , Russian political analyst.

Putin will brief Russia’s political and military elite on the Ukraine conflict, the biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War, in a speech to members of both houses of parliament.

He will also present his analysis of the international situation and present his vision of Russia’s development after the imposition of massive sanctions by the West, according to the Kremlin.

The speech will start at 09:00 GMT in central Moscow.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc would approve more sanctions ahead of the anniversary of the Feb. 24 invasion, which Russia describes as a “special military operation” to defend the country. Russian sovereignty.

WINTER OFFENSIVE

Russia is trying to gain full control of two eastern provinces that make up Ukraine’s industrial Donbass region. It has sent thousands of recruits to Ukraine for a winter offensive, but has so far made little progress in assaults on icy trenches along the eastern front in recent weeks.

Kiev and the West see it as an attempt to give Putin victories he can boast of a year after the biggest conflict in Europe since the start of World War II.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday called for a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine during a stopover in Hungary ahead of a visit to Moscow for talks.

Ukraine says any diplomatic solution requires the withdrawal of Russian forces from its territory.

In public, China has remained neutral, despite signing an “unlimited” friendship pact with Russia a few weeks before the invasion.

Washington has been concerned in recent days about the possibility that Beijing will start supplying weapons to Moscow. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the United States “was not in a position to demand anything from China.”

Ukraine expects to receive significant quantities of Western weapons in the coming months to help it mount a planned counter-offensive. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have claimed to have inflicted huge casualties in repelling attacks by Russian forces.

The British Ministry of Defense claimed that among the Russian casualties were two elite brigades made up of thousands of Marines who were likely rendered “combat unfit” by losses suffered during failed attempts to storm Vuhledar.

“If Russia’s spring offensive comes to nothing, tensions within the Russian leadership are likely to increase,” he said.

(Reuters Worldwide Reporting. Written by Peter Graff, Arshad Mohammed, Simon Lewis and Michael Perry. Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Spanish edition by José Muñoz in the Gdańsk Newsroom)