US President Joe Biden on Saturday met with Ukraine’s foreign and defense ministers at the Marriott Hotel in central Warsaw in his first talks with top Kyiv officials since Russia’s invasion began.
During the meeting, Biden was seated at a long white table alongside US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin facing Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, a White House pool report said.
This as Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Doha Forum that Russia’s “bragging” about its nuclear weapons is fueling a dangerous arms race.
Zelensky also called on Qatar, which Biden…organizes the annual meeting of international political and business leaders, to increase production of natural gas to counter Russian efforts to use energy as a weapon.
“They are bragging that they can destroy with nuclear weapons not only a certain country but the entire planet,” Zelensky said in a live video message to the forum on the 31st day of the Russian military assault against his country.
Kuleba and Reznikov made the rare trip out of Ukraine in a possible sign of growing confidence in the fightback against Russian forces.
Biden last met Kuleba in Washington on February 22 – two days before Russia began its assault.
Since then, Kuleba has also met with Blinken in Poland next to the border with Ukraine on March 5.
Biden is on the second and final day of a visit to Poland after he met with EU and NATO leaders in Brussels earlier in the week.
On Friday, he met with US soldiers stationed in Poland near the Ukrainian border and with aid workers helping refugees fleeing the conflict.
He praised Ukrainians for showing “backbone” against the Russian invasion and compared their resistance to the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in China in 1989.
“This is Tiananmen Square squared,” he said.
He also referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a man who, quite frankly, I think is a war criminal.”
“And I think we’ll meet the legal definition of that as well,” he said.
Biden said he would have liked to see the devastation caused by the conflict “first hand.”
“They won’t let me, understandably I guess, cross the border,” he said.
Speaking to the troops, he said: “You’re in the midst of a fight between democracies and autocrats. What you’re doing is consequential, really consequential.”
Later on Saturday, he is due to meet with Polish leaders and visit a reception centre for refugees and give a major speech on the conflict. AFP