President Joe Biden assured this Saturday that his commitment to the defense of Poland and other NATO member countries is “sacred”, and that the stability of Europe is “of crucial importance” for the United States.
During a meeting in Warsaw, Polish President Andrzej Duda told Biden that Poles have a “huge feeling of being threatened”; a fear that Russia might attack her territory after having invaded Ukraine.
Biden responded that he considers his commitment to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which would force the United States to intervene if Russia attacked Poland or another NATO member state, “sacred.”
“We see Article 5 as a sacred obligation. A sacred obligation. You can count on it. Your freedom is ours,” Biden assured Duda.
The US president considered it essential that NATO remains “absolutely, completely and totally united, without separation in its points of view”, and that it acts “in unison”.
He said that this has been achieved since Russia invaded Ukraine a month ago and that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not achieved his goal of “separating the eastern flank” of NATO from the western one.
“Stability in Europe is of crucial importance to the United States,” Biden stressed.
He added that the most important thing that unites the United States and its European allies is “freedom,” including “freedom of the press, making sure that people have the right to vote.”
The president met with Duda after meeting in a hotel in Warsaw with the Ukrainian foreign and defense ministers, Dmitro Kuleba and Oleksii Reznikov; along with the United States Secretaries of State and Defense, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin.
The meeting marked Biden’s first meeting with a Ukrainian official since the beginning of the Russian invasion, and it discussed “future efforts to help Ukraine defend its territory,” according to the White House.
After the meeting, the Ukrainian defense minister expressed “cautious optimism” about the future of US assistance to Ukraine, and assured in a tweet that Biden had told him: “Ukraine has inspired the whole world.”
Biden will end his European tour this Saturday with a meeting with Ukrainian refugees and a speech on the next steps the world must take in the face of the war in Ukraine.