Biden Promises New Ukraine Aid, Warns Russia on Chemical Weapons
President Joe Biden and Western allies pledged new sanctions and humanitarian aid in response to Vladimir Putin’s assault on Ukraine.
Biden also announced that the U.S. would welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees – though he said many probably prefer to stay closer to home – and provide an additional $1 billion in food, medicine, water, and other supplies.
The Western leaders discussed the next steps to counter Russia’s month-old invasion and huddled over how they might respond should Putin deploy chemical, biological, or even a nuclear weapon.
They met in a trio of emergency summits that had them shuttling across Brussels for back-to-back meetings of NATO, the Group of Seven industrialized nations, and the 27-member European Council.
However, Biden and NATO allies have stressed that the U.S. and NATO would not put troops on the ground in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy says he needs far more
Zelenskyy, while thankful for the newly offered help, made it clear to the Western allies that he needed far more than they are currently willing to give.
“One percent of all your planes, one percent of all your tanks,” Zelenskyy asked members of the NATO alliance. “We can’t just but those. When we will have all this, it will give us, just like you, 100% security.”
According to French President Emmanuel Macron, NATO has made a choice to support Ukraine in this war without going to war with Russia.
Poland and refugee crisis
Poland and other eastern flank NATO countries are seeking clarity on how the U.S. and European nations can assist in dealing with their growing concerns about Russian aggression as well as the refugee crisis.
More than 3.5 million refugees have fled Ukraine in recent weeks, including more than 2 million to Poland.
President Biden is going to visit Rzeszow, Poland, on Friday (March 25, 2022), where energy and refugee issues are expected to be at the center of talks with President Andrzej Duda. He’ll get a briefing on humanitarian aid efforts to assist fleeing refugees and will meet with the U.S. troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who have been deployed in recent weeks to bolster NATO’s eastern flank.
Biden said his top priority at the meetings was to make certain that the West stayed on the same page in its response to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
“The single most important thing is for us to stay unified,” he said.
The possibility that Russia will use chemical or even nuclear weapons has been a grim topic of conversation in Brussels.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview that if Russia deployed chemical weapons, that would make “an unpredictable, dangerous situation even more dangerous and even more unpredictable.”
Biden before departing for Europe said that the possibility of a chemical attack was a “real threat.” In addition, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia could consider using its nuclear weapons if it felt there was “an existential threat for our country.”
Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin also warned, “Russia is capable of anything.”
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