President Biden tests his dedication to democracy Ukraine.
WASHINGTON — The Ukrainian parliament thundered with applause as Joe Biden stepped into the wood-paneled chamber a little more than six years ago. Five hundred miles to the south and east, Russian troops and separatists were occupying parts of the country, and President Barack Obama had dispatched his vice president in a show of solidarity with the besieged nation.
Ukraine’s government was unable to retake the land it lost, and now the world waits to see what message will be sent as Russia readies what might be another, more expansive invasion that could end the nation’s short history as an independent republic. Daniel Fried, a longtime U.S. diplomat in the region, said Biden is someone with “a belief in the free world — without ironic tones.”Now, decades of progress could be rolled back in dramatic fashion in a country where Biden invested years of work to hold the line against Russian aggression.
Although Biden spent decades engaged on foreign affairs as a senator, his focus on Ukraine sharpened as Obama’s vice president. A stalemate eventually took hold. Russian forces and separatists remained in control of parts of Ukraine, while a democratic government based in Kyiv, the capital, tried to carry on.
“Ukraine was at the crossroads of history,” Biden wrote, and he wanted “to remind the men and women sitting in the Rada that they were on the cusp of something extraordinary and — like all the most worthwhile things in life — extraordinarily fragile.” Putin is trying to ensure that it does not. He’s spent months ratcheting up the pressure on Ukraine, and U.S. officials accuse him of planning false flag operations to create a pretense for an invasion.
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