US commitment to Nato is ‘sacred’: Biden
Warsaw, Mar 26 (EFE).- The US’ commitment to Poland, eastern Europe and other Nato allies is “sacred”, president Joe Biden said Saturday.
Biden was visiting Poland at the end of a tour that has also seen him attend a trio of international summits in Brussels convened in the wake of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, which began in late February.
During a meeting in Warsaw on the second day of Biden’s visit, president Andrzej Duda told his US counterpart that Poles fear that Russia could attack their territory after invading Ukraine.
Biden responded that the US’ has a “sacred commitment” to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, which would obligate it to intervene should Russia attack Poland or any other member of the alliance.
“Your freedom is ours,” Biden said as he sought to reassure Duda.
“I’m confident that Vladimir Putin was counting on dividing Nato. But he hasn’t been able to do it. We’ve all stayed together,” the US president said as he stressed how important stability in Europe is to his country.
Biden pointed out that Poland was “taking on a big responsibility, but it should be all of Nato’s responsibility.”
The president met with Duda after another meeting at a Warsaw hotel with Ukrainian foreign and defense ministers Dmytro Kuleba and Oleksii Reznikov, along with US Secretaries of State and Defense, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin.
That meeting marked Biden’s first with a Ukrainian official since the start of Russia’s invasion, and they discussed efforts to “help Ukraine defend its territory,” according to the White House.
The Ukrainian defense minister Reznikov expressed “cautious optimism” about the future of US assistance to Ukraine, and said in a Tweet that Biden had told him “Ukraine has inspired the whole world.”
Following his session with Duda, Biden met with Ukrainian refugees at the PGE Narodowy soccer stadium in the Polish capital, which has been converted into a refugee center to provide assistance to some of the more than 2.17 million refugees who have fled to Poland since the war began on February 24.
In that appearance, Biden told the refugees he views Putin as a “butcher” for his treatment of refugees fleeing the violence in Ukraine. EFE
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