the president, vice president, secretary of state, all in europe. the president, taking a very risky and during trip over the border into ukraine, to stand shoulder to shoulder with zelenskyy. this was an unmistakable message, simone, that the president said by his physical presence, that the west is unified. and the united states is going to stand squarely behind ukraine. if anybody had doubt about the resolve of the west, president biden laid that arrest today. peter, i want to bring you in here because here is what president zelenskyy s former adviser said earlier about president biden s visit, as we near the one year mark of the war. originally, it was all going to be about russia. you know, president putin has set up all the theatrical. yet president biden kind of acted proactively, rather than reactive lee. he came to kyiv before putin said, like, look, we re here for the long run. ukraine will not lose. peter, what does this trip
tomorrow, and he would like to have something to show. it s not clear that that is going to be the case, but the sharp stick in the eye that joe biden coming to kyiv was to vladimir putin is something that is likely to provoke some sort of response from vladimir putin. so, even here in the cities, in kyiv, which is very far from the front, they are bracing for something to happen. remember, the other thing that vladimir putin does when he feels backed into a corner is he drops these references to nuclear weaponry, which we have not seen. but again, sometime tomorrow, we are going to get a speech from vladimir putin, which is going to be competing with the speech from joe biden, who s in warsaw. so, we re going to hear what s on the agenda for the rest of the week, but as far as ukrainians are concerned, they are expecting some sort of retaliation for what happened today. ali velshi, thank you for staying up late, and being up
united states would commit itself to the defense of berlin. there were death threats, there were eastman cars that could ve shot at him. in an or been car near the berlin wall, who would ve thought that day that kennedy would turn out to be safer in berlin than he did to be in dallas later that year and an open car. but the reason why kennedy was there was two. things number one, make sure berlin and berliners knew that we were behind them in the west. and number two, to show americans how important this was to us. so in the spirit of that, what joe biden did today was to say, our commitment to ukraine is so important that i m going to risk my life getting on a train for ten hours going to kyiv, in a situation that cannot be controlled, open air with crowds because i think it s that important. he s trying to do impress ukrainians, he s also trying to impress americans.
it had various different groups involved from the pentagon, the white house, and the ukrainians, and it, a, didn t leak and, b, got carried out in a very, very difficult week is very something. this ten hour train ride, you know, you know as well anyone else, joe biden loves the train. but this was fraught with issues all the way through the ukrainian countryside, from poland, you know, through and passed lviv, into kyiv, and then being met at the train station here, brought into a city that was basically under lockdown. that hasn t even been the case in kyiv since the beginning of this war, so this was really, really a meticulous piece of planning that was undertaken, and of course, the president, you know, had the final sign of. but it was clear that even last year in poland, when joe biden was there, at the beginning of the war, he wanted to go into
mean, in terms of escalating tensions between biden and putin? well, i think ali velshi had it right. this is a sharp stick in the eye for vladimir putin. think about this. just a year ago at this time, if you would ve asked adam putin which president was going to be in the capital of kyiv today, it wouldn t have been joe biden, right? he s not expecting for the americans to be so successful in arming and helping the ukrainians beat back their invasion. they expected to be in kyiv within days of their invasion on february 24th last year. instead, they re stuck and sort of a grinding war in the east, trying to hold on to the territory deval ready got, see if they can kind of turn the tables on the ukrainians, who have had the momentum now for several months. so, i think that president biden is sending a very unmistakable message. it is a stick in the eye for president putin. i think that s the way it s looked out in moscow. not just by president putin, but people around him. they have