PARIS: US President Joe Biden on Saturday vowed Washington was “standing strong” with Ukraine as French President Emmanuel Macron hosted him on a state visit shadowed by Kyiv’s fight against Russia’s invasion and the looming US election, AFP reported.
Speaking after visiting Normandy earlier this week to mark 80 years since D-Day, Joe Biden repeatedly emphasized the value of America’s European alliances in a swipe at his more isolationist election rival former president Donald Trump.
With Ukraine struggling to repel Russian advances over two years into the war and in desperate need of greater Western military aid, Biden insisted that under his rule the United States would not flinch in its support.
“Putin is not going to stop at Ukraine,” Biden said alongside Macron after talks at the Elysee Palace. “All of Europe will be threatened, we are not going to let that happen,” Biden said.
“The United States is standing strong with Ukraine. We will not, I say it again, walk away,” he added.
Biden, 81, is set to face his Republican rival and predecessor Trump later this year in presidential elections that commentators predict will subject US democracy to a severe test.
Trump has also signaled his lack of interest in international organizations including NATO and previously boasted he could solve the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected.
Macron, 46, emphasized the unity with the United States under Biden and expressed gratitude for his counterpart’s approach to Europe.
“I thank you, Mr President, for being the president of the world’s number one power but doing it with the loyalty of a partner who likes and respects the Europeans,” Macron said.
He said Paris and Washington also shared the same views on Iran, accusing Tehran of pursuing a “strategy of escalation at all levels”.
“Our two countries are determined to exert the necessary pressure to stop this trend,” he said.
Biden has been in France since Wednesday and took part in this week’s commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in northern France involving US, British, Canadian and other foreign troops that changed the course of World War II.
Also invited to the ceremonies was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who told Biden in a bilateral meeting Friday that Kyiv was counting on “shoulder-to-shoulder” support.
Expressing regret over how an aid package for Ukraine was held up in the US legislature, Biden said: “I wish we could have done it when we wanted to six months earlier but we got it done.”
The United States and France are two of Kyiv’s main Western backers since Russia unleashed its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
The US leader met Macron for talks at the Elysee Palace, with the two men seen talking one-to-one at a table in the Elysee gardens under a sunshade on a warm Paris June afternoon.
“France was our first friend,” Biden said, referring to French support in the War of Independence against British colonial rule. “And remains one of our best ones,” he added.
