Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, walks with U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., right, and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., left to a closed-door meeting at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 26, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris admonished any suggestion that Ukraine should end its war by relinquishing territory to Russia.
Zelenskyy and Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, met for the seventh time during Harris’ tenure as vice president as the Ukrainian leader visited the White House and U.S. Capitol.
Zelenskyy is expected to meet in New York on Friday morning with former President Donald Trump, who said in a press conference late Thursday he would be able to “make a deal” between Ukraine and Russia “quite quickly.”
“I don’t want to tell you what that looks like,” said Trump, the GOP nominee, who is locked in a tight race with Harris for the Oval Office.
Zelenskyy’s Thursday meetings included a separate one-on-one with President Joe Biden, to shore up continued support as the United States faces the possibility of a shift in power after the quickly approaching 2024 election.
Harris proclaimed the need for “order and stability in our world,” and reiterated her pledge to work with NATO allies to defend Ukraine from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022 nearly a decade after forcefully annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
“Nothing about the end of this war can be decided without Ukraine,” Harris said in comments livestreamed on C-SPAN.
“However, in candor, I share with you, Mr. President, there are some in my country who would instead force Ukraine to give up large parts of its sovereign territory, who would demand that Ukraine accept neutrality, and would require Ukraine to forgo security relationships with other nations,” Harris continued during brief joint remarks with Zelenskyy to the press. “These proposals are the same of those of Putin.”
Harris delivered the comments one day after Trump told a rally crowd in North Carolina that Biden and Harris “allowed” the ongoing war by “feeding Zelenskyy money and munitions like no country has ever seen before.”
United Nations
Zelenskyy’s Washington visits came as the United Nations General Assembly gathered this week in New York City, where Zelenskyy again communicated to world leaders that he wants “territorial integrity” for his nation.
Zelenskyy and Biden met in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon, where they discussed the Ukrainian leader’s “victory plan,” which requests U.S. authority to launch Western missiles deeper inside Russia’s borders.
“Your determination is incredibly important for us to prevail,” Zelenskyy told Biden in front of reporters.
In brief joint remarks to the press, Biden said “I see two key pieces. First, right now, we have to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield.”
Biden announced the release of $7.9 billion that Congress appropriated for Ukraine and ordered any remaining money to be allocated by his last day in office, Jan. 20, 2025.
“This will strengthen Ukraine’s position in future negotiations,” Biden said.
Ukraine is expected to request more assistance from the U.S. in the coming months.
The U.S. has directed more than $59.3 billion in security assistance since Biden took office, the vast majority of which was committed after Russia’s invasion, according to Pentagon figures. Overall U.S. foreign assistance to Ukraine since 2022 has totaled roughly $175 billion.
Biden, Harris and Zelenskyy did not answer reporters’ shouted questions following their respective meetings.
Zelenskyy goes to Capitol Hill, again
Zelenskyy began Thursday with meetings on Capitol Hill, splitting time with Senate and House lawmakers, absent U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The meetings occurred less than 24 hours after Johnson wrote a letter to Zelenskyy demanding he fire Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. for organizing a trip for the Ukrainian president alongside Democrats to Pennsylvania, a key swing state in the 2024 presidential election.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro led Zelenskyy on a tour Sunday of an ammunition plant in Scranton. They were joined by Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Matt Cartwright, both Pennsylvania Democrats up for reelection.
“The facility was in a politically contested battleground state, was led by a top political surrogate for Kamala Harris, and failed to include a single Republican because — on purpose — no Republicans were invited. The tour was clearly a partisan campaign event designed to help Democrats and is clearly election interference,” Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, wrote.
Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, opened an investigation Wednesday into the “misuse of government resources that allowed Zelensky to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.”
Lawmakers exiting the meetings told reporters Zelenskyy did not comment on Johnson’s letter but rather spoke about the war effort and Ukraine’s desire to use long-range missiles to target military assets farther into Russia.
Republican Sen. John Boozman, who sits on the U.S. Helsinki Commission, told reporters “the more damage we can do, the sooner, the better off we are.”
“It’s to the Russians’ advantage if this thing drags on forever,” said Boozman, of Arkansas.
When asked by reporters if Biden should give permission to Zelenskyy to strike deeper into Russia, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado said, “I hope he will.”
Bennet, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told reporters he would not repeat “anything that anybody else said in that room,” but said he “didn’t hear” any concern over fears of stoking Russia, a nuclear power, to retaliate against NATO allies.
Rep. Joe Wilson, chair of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, told reporters the meeting with Zelenskyy was “positive” and reiterated his support for a Ukrainian victory.
He chalked up Johnson’s absence to a possible “scheduling” issue.
Wilson, who also co-chairs the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said he’s “confident things are going to work out” regarding Johnson’s rebuke of Zelenskyy. Wilson then quickly pivoted to praising Trump’s approval of a 2017 sale of U.S. weapons to Ukraine.
When pressed by States Newsroom on Trump’s refusal to say whether he wants Ukraine to win the war, Wilson defended the former president.
“I defer to President Trump, but I again, I have so much appreciation that it was Donald Trump that tried to avoid all of this,” the South Carolina Republican said.
Trump was impeached by the U.S. House in 2019, but acquitted by the Senate, for threatening to withhold security assistance for Ukraine unless Zelenskyy publicly announced an investigation into Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election, which the former vice president under Barack Obama won.
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
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