President Biden made a sudden appearance yesterday in Kyiv’s presidential palace. The visit was intended to be a morale booster for shellshocked Ukrainians and a direct challenge to Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, whose troops invaded Ukraine a year ago this week. “One year later, Kyiv stands,” Biden said. “And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”
The war in Ukraine is about power and the principle of territorial sovereignty, and about whether the Western-designed global order that Americans thought would prevail for decades will survive new challenges from Moscow and Beijing. But it is increasingly a contest between Putin and Biden, who have been circling each other for years.
Today, the men are set to deliver separate speeches, each vowing to stick with the war. Putin will most likely make the case anew that he is not only saving Ukraine from “Nazism” but saving Russia from being overrun by NATO. And Biden is expected to frame the war as a long battle between democracy and autocracy, in which the former has emerged the winner of the first year.
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