stands. america stands with you and the world stands with you. kyiv has captured a part of my heart, i must say. putin thought ukraine was weak and the west was divided. as you know, mr. president, i said to you from the beginning he s counting on us not sticking together. he thought he could outlast us. i don t think he s thinking that right now. god knows what he s thinking but i don t think he s thinking that. but he s just been plain wrong, plain wrong. and one year later the evidence is right here in this room. with his visit biden became the first modern american president to step foot in an active war zone where u.s. troops were not on the ground. and now a day later we re beginning to learn how the secret trip came to be. according to a senior white house official the visit had
way of saying we respect you or we want to be friends, but it s a way of saying, you know, heads up, don t get yourself in some kind of mess because our leader is going to be in the capital today. let s talk about the importance of the timing of this visit to kyiv and the accompanied speech today from warsaw. it s the one year mark, sure, but also about it seems to me about refocusing the american attention on this. polling suggests americans are slipping a bit in that support of funding ukraine as well as trying to make sure our european allies stay the course as well because seems like some brutal months of fighting are ahead. absolutely, jonathan. i think this message was not only intended for russia but for europe as well. on one hand you have president biden in the geosphere it s europe but this is the geofear where russia sits, and president biden is making this statement in kyiv, also in poland today
bipartisan effort to support kyiv, but it does seem the voices those still a minority the voices in the republican party who want the aid to stop are growing louder. so so much of this is about time. if this war lasts for not just months but maybe years talk about the challenges facing the administration to keep the military aid and weapons heading to ukraine? for sure. i mean, i think it was interesting the two people you just quoted and rightly so mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham are very important senators on the republican side, but they re senators. and where some of the voices that you re referring to a little less supportive are from the house. i think to your question, jonathan, it s that and the fact that they have that very small majority in the house that will make it difficult if at some
point a couple more people on the republican side end up not wanting to support this type of aid. so it s i don t think in any way it s a major threat to the u.s. support for ukraine right now, but it is absolutely a voice. and it s an undercurrent on the republican side. certainly one to keep an eye on. there s funding passed at the end of last year that should carry ukraine at least for several months for this year. but when more is needed that s when that debate will grow more fierce. of course, jeff, president biden yesterday made his surprise trip to kyiv and today has been long planned the speech in poland to mark the one year of the invasion. tell us what we should expect to hear from the president today. so the president s meeting with the president of poland today, giving remarks and i think what you ll hear from him is perhaps in some ways a repeat of what we ve heard from him
been in the work for months but following zelenskyy s secret visit back in december. biden himself chose to visit kyiv as opposed to other parts of ukraine that had easier access. he wanted to highlight that the capital is still standing strong. as recently as friday white house officials denied biden would make a stop in ukraine while visiting neighboring poland this week. that part of the trip was announced in advance. in the early hours of sunday biden, a very small team of advisers and just two members of the white house press corp took off from the air base in germany. the smaller air force one plane landed on sunday afternoon and stayed at the base with its shades down until after the sun went down again. after touching down in poland on sunday night biden and the team boarder a sleeper train for a ten-hour trip to ukraine. around 8:00 a.m. local time