Jill Biden to meet with displaced Ukraine families
1st lady plans to spend Mother’s Day in Slovakia
Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia this week to meet with Ukrainian families displaced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The first lady will depart the United States on Thursday evening, arriving at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania on Friday - a base for NATO Response Force troops - where she will meet with U.S. service members, the White House said.
The tour from Thursday through May 9 also includes meetings with government officials, U.S. embassy staffers and humanitarian aid workers helping to teach displaced Ukrainian children and support them and their families during the crisis.
On Mother’s Day, the first lady will meet with Ukrainian mothers and children in Kosice and Vysne Nemecke, Slovakia, who have been forced to flee their homes.
In the two months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 5.5 million people have left the country, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit Saturday to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the United States is committed to “be there for you until the fight is done.”
Pelosi, D -Calif., who is next in line to the presidency after the vice president, became the highestranking U.S. leader to visit Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. She led Democratic lawmakers on the first official congressional delegation there since the war began.
The first lady started the campaign push in March with harsh words for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I talk to Joe every day about what’s going on in Ukraine,” she said, “and I want you to know that he is working tirelessly to bring people together, to bring the NATO countries together, so that they can stand up against Putin.”
During President Biden’s State of the Union address in March, Kyiv’s envoy to Washington, Oksana Markarova, sat in the first lady’s viewing box in the House chamber, a placement designed to show solidarity between the United States and Ukraine.