US President Joe Biden landed this Friday within the metropolis of Rzeszów, close to the border with Ukraine, to evaluate the scenario on the bottom within the nation that has welcomed essentially the most refugees for the reason that Ukrainian conflict started.
Rzeszów is the primary cease in Poland for Biden, who will meet with Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw this Saturday, White Home nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan mentioned at a press convention from the presidential aircraft.
The US president landed at 2:15 p.m. native time (1:14 p.m. GMT) from Brussels, the place he participated on Thursday in three NATO, G7 and European Union (EU) summits centered on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Town of Rzeszów, situated a couple of hundred kilometers – simply over an hour by highway – from the border with Ukraine, has turn out to be a sort of logistics middle in a rustic that has acquired greater than two million Ukrainian refugees.
America has 10,500 army personnel deployed in Poland, a tenth of the 100,000 US troops at present on the European continent, the place the Pentagon has strengthened its presence within the wake of the conflict in Ukraine.
Biden will fly to Warsaw this afternoon, the place on Saturday he’ll meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda, go to a refugee middle and provides a speech earlier than leaving Poland for Washington.
“Tomorrow he’ll give an essential speech through which he’ll discuss what’s at stake proper now, the urgency of the problem that lies forward (…) and why it can be crucial that the free world stands united within the face of Russian aggression” Sullivan mentioned Friday.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which started a month in the past, has brought on a motion of refugees in Europe that has not been seen since World Struggle II: there are already 3.6 million folks, however the quantity continues to rise.
Of those, Poland is the primary recipient, the place 2.17 million have arrived and of which round 1.2 million nonetheless stay within the nation, whereas the remainder have moved to different European international locations, particularly Germany.