Jill Biden pays surprise visit to Ukraine and meets first lady Olena Zelenska
Jill Biden made an unannounced visit to western Ukraine on Sunday - Mother's Day in the US - and held a surprise meeting with first lady Olena Zelenska.
Travelling under the cloak of secrecy, Ms Biden became the latest high-profile American to show US support for the embattled nation. “I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Ms Biden told Ms Zelenska. “I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop and this war has been brutal and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also made a surprise trip to Ukraine. He visited the city of Irpin, which had been damaged by Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv at the start of the war.
Canadian officials said the prime minister would meet with Zelenskyy and “reaffirm Canada’s unwavering support for the Ukrainian people”. Ms Biden spent about two hours in Ukraine, traveling by vehicle to the town of Uzhhorod, about a 10-minute drive from a Slovakian village that she toured on the border. Ms Zelenska thanked Biden for her “courageous act” and said: “We understand what it takes for the US first lady to come here during a war when military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day - even today.” The two first ladies came together in a small classroom, sitting across a table from one another and greeting each other in front of reporters before they met in private. Ms Zelenska and her children have been at an undisclosed location for their safety.
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The school where they met has been turned into transitional housing for Ukrainian migrants from elsewhere in the country. The visit allowed Ms Biden to conduct the kind of personal diplomacy that her husband would like to be doing himself. President Joe Biden said during his visit to Poland in March that he was disappointed he could not visit Ukraine to see conditions “first-hand” but that he was not allowed, likely due to security reasons. The White House said as recently as last week that the president “would love to visit” but there were no plans for him to do so at this time. The meeting came about after the two first ladies exchanged correspondence in recent weeks, according to US officials who declined to provide further details because they were not authorised to discuss the ladies’ private communications. As she arrived at the school, Ms Biden, who was wearing a Mother’s Day corsage that was a gift from her husband, embraced Ms Zelenska and presented her with a bouquet. After their private meeting, the two joined a group of children who live at the school in making tissue-paper bears to give as Mother’s Day gifts.
Ms Biden’s visit follows recent stops in the war-torn country by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress, as well as a joint trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. Her visit was limited to western Ukraine as Russia is concentrating its military power in eastern Ukraine. On the same day as Ms Biden’s visit, a Russian bomb flattened a school in eastern Ukraine that had been sheltering about 90 people in its basement, with dozens feared dead. Earlier, in the Slovakian border village of Vysne Nemecke, she toured its border processing facility, surveying operations set up by the United Nations and other relief organisations to assist Ukrainians seeking refuge. Ms Biden attended a religious service in a tent set up as a chapel, where a priest intoned: “We pray for the people of Ukraine.” And before that, in Kosice, Ms Biden met and offered support to Ukrainian mothers in Slovakia who have been displaced by Russia’s war. She assured them that the “hearts of the American people” are behind them.
In recent weeks, border crossings have been averaging less than 2,000 per day, down from over 10,000 per day immediately after Russia’s invasion on February 24. A large portion of that flow is daily cross border traffic. Biden is on a four-day visit to Eastern Europe to highlight US support for Ukrainian refugees and for the allied countries, such as Romania and Slovakia, that are providing a safe haven for them. She spent Friday and Saturday in Romania, visiting with US troops and meeting with Ukrainian refugee mothers and children. With her trip, the American first lady followed the path of prior sitting first ladies who also travelled to war or conflict zones. Eleanor Roosevelt visited servicemen abroad during World War II to help boost troop morale. Pat Nixon joined President Richard Nixon on his 1969 trip to South Vietnam, becoming the first first lady to visit a combat zone, according to the National First Ladies’ Library. She flew 18 miles from Saigon in an open helicopter, accompanied by US Secret Service agents. Hillary Clinton visited a combat zone, stopping in Bosnia in 1996. Four years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and during the US-led war in Afghanistan, Laura Bush went to Kabul in 2005 and Melania Trump accompanied President Donald Trump to Iraq in December 2018.