Biden to visit Poland during Europe trip

President Biden will travel to Poland on Friday after a series of high-level meetings in Brussels as the United States and its allies coordinate their response to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. 

Biden will meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw to discuss “the humanitarian and human rights crisis that Russia’s unjustified and unprovoked war on Ukraine has created,” the White House said in a statement Sunday. 

Nearly two million Ukrainian refugees have fled to the Poland with Moscow’s war on Ukraine now in its fourth week.

In Brussels, Biden is slated to meet with NATO Allies as well as G7 and European Union leaders regarding “severe and unprecedented costs” being imposed on Russia.

Earlier this month, Vice President Harris traveled to Poland and Romania to show the administration’s solidarity with Ukraine and neighboring allies. While there. she met with Duda as well as with several displaced people from Ukraine who had fled to Warsaw.

However, Poland and the U.S. have struggled to stay on the same page as central actors in the crisis. 

The U.S. rejected a Polish plan to transfer its MiG fighter jets into Ukraine, with the U.S. replacing its fleet. 

And after Poland said it plans to submit a proposal for a NATO peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, the U.S. said American troops would not be involved. 

“The president has been very clear that we will not put American troops on the ground in Ukraine. We don’t want to escalate this into a war with the United States,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on CNN.