Poland awaits speech by Biden on Ukraine

WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s president said Saturday that he thinks a two-day visit by U.S. President Joe Biden to mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will produce developments of global significance.

Biden is set to arrive Tuesday in Warsaw. During the trip, he plans to hold talks with the leaders of NATO’s nine eastern flank nations and to give a speech on “how the United States has rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine,” according to the White House.

“I have no doubt that the visit of President [Joe] Biden in Poland and his address in Warsaw will be of world dimension,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

Poland’s leaders are stressing it will be Biden’s second visit in less that a year to Poland, a country offering Kyiv substantial military and humanitarian support.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also was in Munich on Saturday, said Biden “will make a very significant speech in Poland next week.”

“I think it’s safe to say that as well, that he’s likely to talk about the road that we’ve traveled together over the last year, where we are today and, as I said, our enduring commitment to Ukraine’s success, which is all of our success,” Blinken said.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he thinks Biden’s address will be “far more significant and consequential” than the state of the nation address Russian President Vladimir Putin is scheduled to give Tuesday to the Federal Assembly, Russia’s national legislature.

Putin sent troops into Ukraine Feb. 24, 2022. Stiff Ukrainian resistance and supplies of Western weapons have forced Moscow to scale back its military goals. But the diplomatic consequences of the yearlong war have reverberated worldwide.