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Joe Biden has said the US will “not walk away” from Ukraine and described Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “tyrant” at the commemoration of the D-Day landings that changed the course of the second world war.
The US president was speaking on Thursday during events in Normandy on the northern French coast, on the 80th anniversary of landings by almost 160,000 Allied soldiers to fight off German Nazi forces.
Just months ahead of his re-election bid against Donald Trump, which could affect US support for Ukrainian troops more than two years into their battle against Russian forces, Biden underscored his backing for Kyiv.
“We will not walk away because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there,” Biden told other world leaders present at the commemoration, as well as elderly veterans, some of the last to have witnessed D-Day. “Ukraine’s neighbours will be threatened, all of Europe will be threatened,” Biden said.
“Ukraine has been invaded by a tyrant bent on domination,” the US president said. “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable.”
The D-Day commemorations have particularly reverberated this year as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, and ahead of elections that include the US presidential vote in November, and the European parliament polls taking place on June 6-9, which are expected to deliver a rightward swing. Russia was not invited to the Normandy events.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also touched down in France on Thursday, and was due to join the commemorations and spend time in Paris on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Allies defended Europe’s freedom then, and Ukrainians do so now. Unity prevailed then, and true unity can prevail today,” Zelenskyy said on X as he landed in France.
Zelenskyy is expected to meet Biden in Normandy and again next week during the G7 summit in Italy, according to the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff. Andriy Yermak said Zelenskyy and Biden would discuss “important issues of support for Ukraine, strengthening our defence”.
The Biden administration has been working on plans to try and rush billions of dollars in funding to Ukraine before Trump’s potential return to the White House in November’s election, under a proposal set to be discussed at the G7 summit next week.
That funding could take the form of a G7 loan backed by future profits generated on Russian assets immobilised by the west after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.
Biden has also approved Ukraine’s use of some American-made weapons to strike within Russia, provided the targets relate to Moscow’s offensive in the region of Kharkiv.
“Isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago and it is not the answer today,” Biden said in his speech, as he paid tribute to those who fell in 1944 and the thousands of Americans who were killed in Normandy, as well as the “unbreakable unity of the allies”.
Christine Lagarde, head of the European Central Bank, said that before cutting interest rates for the first time in nearly five years on Thursday, members of the governing council had taken a moment to mark D-Day.
“We paid tribute to those sacrifices and those of many others because it enabled us to build what we have built, to disagree in a very civilised way, to have very harmonious and congenial decisions amongst 20 different nationals representing their respective national central banks amongst our governing council.”
“Then, we decided to cut,” she said.
Additional reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv
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