Biden sees troops in Poland as Russia shifts goal
As President Joe Biden visited Poland on Friday in a show of support for NATO’s eastern flank, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s military chiefs signaled a streamlining of war aims in Ukraine – a potentially face-saving path for Moscow to exit what has become a grinding conflict.
The Russian military leadership, beset by supply, morale and logistical problems, said its focus was now on driving Ukrainian forces back from the eastern Donbas region, where the Kremlin has fomented a separatist conflict for eight years.
Expanding the separatist region westward was part of Putin’s pretext for the Feb. 24 invasion, so if such an expansion were formalized in political negotiations with Ukrainian leaders, it could be a way for him to claim a measure of success.
Despite a Russian failure to seize the Ukrainian capital or unseat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Maj. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi told a briefing in Moscow that the operation’s first phase had been “mainly accomplished.” But he pointedly refused to rule out an all-out assault on Kyiv or other cities.
Biden attended emergency summits of NATO, the Group of 7 and the European Council in Brussels on Thursday, before heading to Poland. He visited Rzeszow, a Polish city near the Ukraine border that has become a hub for weapons going into Ukraine and refugees flowing out, where he gave a pep talk to U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, who are stationed in Rzeszow as part of NATO forces.
“What you’re engaged in is much more than just whether or not you can alleviate the suffering of the people of Ukraine,” Biden said. “We’re in a new phase. … We’re at an inflection point.”