WARSAW — President Joe Biden will give what he intends to be a major address here Saturday about the stakes for the world and the path ahead for Ukraine in a city where the tragedy of Russia’s war is apparent in real time.
Ahead of the speech, Biden met with Ukrainian refugees and aid workers at a sports stadium that once hosted rock concerts and soccer matches. It now provides temporary shelter for refugees, and assistance helping them register for school and work.
At the stadium, a group of refugee women and children gathered around Biden telling him about their experiences, asking him to pray for their male relatives back in Ukraine, and thanking him for the U.S. support. Biden hugged a woman with tears in her eyes and picked up a little girl, clad in pink winter wear, to take a photo with her. The girl’s mother told Biden how her daughter and infant had been sheltering in a basement before making it to Poland.
“I’m always surprised by the depth and strength of the human sprint, I mean it sincerely,” Biden said after meeting with the refugees. “They are an amazing group of people.”
When asked by a journalist about reports of a change in Russian strategy, Biden sounded a skeptical note. “I’m not sure they have,” he said. A Russian general said Friday that forces are shifting away from their country-wide attack on Ukraine and refocusing on the “complete liberation” of the country’s separatist Donbas region.
Biden, asked what he thought of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, was blunt. “He’s a butcher,” said Biden.
The refugee crisis has been ever-present throughout Biden’s two days in Poland. As Biden’s motorcade headed to a meeting with Poland’s president Saturday, it rolled past the Warsaw train station where a steady stream of refugees just arriving in the country lined up for food and basic supplies like toilet paper, and sought help with housing and transportation.
While Poland has welcomed the refugees with open arms, and signs of support for Ukraine blanket the city, Polish officials, including the mayor of Warsaw with whom Biden will meet Saturday, have said they are being pushed to the brink trying to help the more than 2 million refugees who have flooded into the country in a matter of weeks.
“We do acknowledge that Poland is taking on a significant responsibility that I don’t think should just be Poland,” Biden told President Andrzej Duda during a meeting Saturday. “It should be the whole world. All nations’ responsibility.”
Biden also provided reassurances to Duda that if Russia were to attack Poland, the U.S. would come to its defense as part of its commitment under the NATO alliance.
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Biden’s speech will cap three days in Europe, where he held what could be some of the most consequential meetings of his presidency with world leaders, seeking to solidify their unity behind a sustained pressure campaign against Russia.
The White House said it hoped Biden’s speech would help unite support for the Ukrainian people, hold Russia accountable and frame the conflict as a larger battle for democracy.
“He will speak to the stakes of this moment, the urgency of the challenge that lies ahead, what the conflict in Ukraine means for the world and why it is so important that the free world sustain unity and resolve in the face of Russian aggression,” said Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
As the war entered its second month, White House officials acknowledged they were preparing for what could be a long, increasingly brutal conflict and were aiming to use Biden’s meeting and his speech to lay the groundwork for the road ahead.
“This could go on for quite some time, and to sustain that unity as costs rise, as the tragedy unfolds, that’s hard work,” said Sullivan. “And the president wanted to get everyone together to say, we’ve got to do that work.”
The U.S. announced a series of steps this week to try to ratchet up pressure on Russia and assist Ukraine, including additional sanctions on more than 400 Russians and Russian entities, $1 billion in humanitarian assistance, plans to take in 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, and a task force to lessen European dependence on Russian natural gas.
But Biden acknowledged before leaving Brussels that his actions would do little to deter Putin in the near term. Rather, the president said he hoped that the sanctions being placed on Russia by the U.S. and Europe, if maintained and enforced, would ultimately pressure Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
“Sanctions never deter,” Biden said. “The maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain and the demonstration — why I asked for this NATO meeting today — is to be sure that, after a month, we will sustain what we’re doing — not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.”
