After hearing the news that President Biden was planning another trip to Poland this week to mark the anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine, I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be a great if he would go to Kyiv?"
What a surprise, to find out that he left Washington in the early morning hours yesterday, flew to Rzeszow, Poland, where he spoke last year at the start of the war, then boarded a train and rode for 10 hours across Ukraine, to Kyiv. He had last been seen in public on Saturday night. Then, the next time he was seen in public, he was leaving St. Michael's Cathedral with President Zelenskyy as air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv.
This is a historic visit, the President of the United States visiting a country at war, meeting in the heart of a capital city that Russia tried, and failed to capture a year ago, with its President as a demonstration of American solidarity with Ukraine, a nation inspired by American freedom, democracy and idealism against a totalitarian oligarchy showing its total disregard for basic human rights. That is exactly the symbolism behind President Biden's appearance in the Ukrainian capital, along with a huge morale boost for the Ukrainian people, its military forces and President Zelenskyy.
The Historical Significance of President Biden's Visit to Kyiv
The importance of this visit cannot be overstated. Other heads of state have visited Ukraine, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Kyiv shortly after the Ukrainians had pushed the Russian attempt to capture the city back. First Lady Jill Biden met with Ukraine's first lady Olena Zelenskyy on Mother's Day, 2022 in Uzhhorod, just across the border from Hungary. But the President's trip to Kyiv was a stunning, remarkable, inspirational and strategically important visit that will go down in history.
The morale boost to Ukrainians, seeing the American President walking around central Kyiv, which is a target of Russian missiles, must be huge. It should also be a huge encouragement to the Ukrainian soldiers who have kept a full scale invasion of their country from happening, which has not only surprised the Russians, but the whole world. It is a testimony to their resolve and their ability that the President of the United States could ride a train ten hours across half the country, and visit their capital city, still in their hands a year after the Russian invasion.
The Russians must also be quite shocked, and there must be quite an effort going on there now to keep this news from somehow reaching their people. The President of the United States can travel halfway around the world and make it into Kyiv. Vladimir Putin's military has been unable get him into a city less than a hundred miles from the Russian border.
In the United States, the Visit is Separating "The Sheep from the Goats"
The Ukrainians are fighting to hang on to their democracy, which has brought to their people the kind of freedom and protection of individual rights that they have only been able to enjoy for the short period of time that Ukraine has existed as an independent country in the modern age. We take so much for granted, but they are a developing democracy, admiring and now experiencing freedom that we often take for granted. This visit was a symbol of our solidarity, based on core American idealism, with Ukraine's fight to preserve their democracy and freedom.
We are seeing, in the United States, individuals whose words and deeds are revealing their lack of American patriotism, and their opposition to American idealism as expressed in the representative, constitutional democracy established by our founding fathers in 1789. Predictably, it did not take long for the anti-American voices to come out and show themselves for exactly who they are. It should not be surprising that the same traitors who have expressed support for the insurrectionists of January 6th are the disgruntled complainers about the President's visit to Ukraine, and about American help to the Ukrainians to defend their country.
They've made themselves known, I won't waste space or give them publicity by naming them. But I will say this. Any American who wants to see Ukraine fall, and who wants Russia to win this war is unpatriotic and un-American, and stands against everything this country stands for. Any member of Congress opposed to helping Ukraine is also opposed to American idealism. That's how we will identify those who are against our freedom. We need to acknowledge that, continue to support Ukraine, and do all we can to make these anti-American anti-patriots pay a huge political price for their opposition to democracy and American idealism.
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