Air-raid sirens punctuate Biden’s walk in downtown Kyiv. (Published 2023) (2024)

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Here is the latest on Biden’s visit to Ukraine.

Mr. Biden’s visit to Ukraine, his first since the war began, was shrouded in secrecy. The White House alerted Moscow about Mr. Biden’s travel plans several hours before the president arrived in Ukraine in an effort to “deconflict” with Russian forces operating in the country, according to Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser.

Here is what else you need to know:

• Mr. Biden will give a speech on Tuesday in Warsaw and meet with President Andrzej Duda of Poland and leaders of other NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

• The American president’s visit sets up an increasingly direct confrontation with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is expected to deliver a state-of-the nation address in Moscow on Tuesday. After Mr. Biden’s visit to Ukraine, which Russian state television cast as a publicity stunt, Mr. Putin could take an “even tougher” line on Ukraine in his speech, wrote Tatiana Stanovaya, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

• The $500 million in military aid to Ukraine that Mr. Biden announced includes artillery ammunition, Javelin missiles and howitzers and will be released in the coming days. But he made no mention of the advanced arms that Ukraine has asked for, including long-range weapons and fighter jets, as it tries to hold off a renewed Russian offensive in the east.

• Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, arrived in Moscow on Monday, according to Russian state media. He could meet with Mr. Putin, the Kremlin’s spokesman said. China on Monday accused the Biden administration of spreading lies and defended its close partnership with Russia, a day after Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said that he had warned Mr. Wang when they spoke in Munich against “providing lethal support” for Moscow’s war effort.

As news of Biden’s visit to Kyiv spread, so did the memes.

One meme features the president in various poses, appearing to visit local businesses in Ukraine. Much of the humor comes from Mr. Biden’s expressions: In some, he dons his signature aviators and gives a thumbs-up. In others, he clutches an ice cream cone.

Businesses shared the photos with sly captions, joking as if the president had stopped at their supermarket, coffee shop or ice cream cart on his tour of Kyiv. One meme with nearly 1,500 likes shows Mr. Biden outside a gas station carrying a convenience store hot dog.

Ukrainians have turned to social media throughout the war to create and spread a new language of memes, both defiant and humorous, and businesses often join in. Military gains are celebrated with memes, as are assistance packages from allies.

Most of the time, even non-Ukrainians can understand the joke. But certain memes feature symbols that have become a visual shorthand that are targeted at those in Ukraine. Watermelons represent Kherson, which is known for producing the fruit; cotton symbolizes explosions because the Ukrainian word for cotton is similar to the Russian word for a loud noise; and Shiba Inu dogs are the mascot for a specific group of Ukrainian allies.

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Trains, planes and automobiles: President Biden’s whirlwind trip to Ukraine.

After a refueling stop in Germany, where the plane sat for about 75 minutes with its window shades closed, Air Force One landed at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland at 7:57 p.m. local time on Sunday. The airport was largely clear of people.

A shorter-than-usual motorcade of about 20 vehicles, none of them using sirens or lights, drove east for about an hour on a largely empty highway, headed to the Przemyśl Główny train station on the border with Ukraine.

It was there that Mr. Biden boarded a Ukrainian train, the shades of its large square windows mostly drawn. Some of the cars were blue with a yellow stripe along the middle, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, similar to trains that carried refugees into Poland from Ukraine.

One of the reporters with the president noted a small group of people on another track, huddled in conversation but apparently far enough away to be unaware of the famous passenger boarding on the nearby train.

At 9:37 p.m., the train began rolling. Destination: Kyiv.

At roughly 8 a.m., Mr. Biden’s train rolled into the Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky station, where Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was waiting. The morning air was chilly, and the platform had been cleared of people.

After about five hours on the ground in Kyiv, including meetings with President Volodomyr Zelensky, statements by the two leaders and a visit to honor the nation’s fallen, Mr. Biden returned to the train station at about 1 p.m.

For roughly the next eight hours, the train meandered through western Ukraine on its way back to Poland. It arrived at the Przemyśl Główny station at 8:45 p.m. on Monday.

Belarus expels three Polish diplomats, as a rift between the neighbors widens.

Poland announced the expulsions of its officials shortly before the scheduled arrival in Poland of President Biden, who visited neighboring Ukraine earlier on Monday.

Long testy relations between Poland and Belarus, whose western regions were Polish territory until World War II, have been strained to nearly their breaking point by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The two countries have taken opposite sides in the conflict.

Poland has become the main route for Western weapons flowing into Ukraine while Belarus let Russia use its territory as a staging ground for an ill-fated assault on Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, last February. Thousands of Russian soldiers are now gathered in Belarus in what both governments have described as training exercises, although Ukrainian officials have watched the drills closely for signs that they could be a prelude to another incursion.

Poland last week closed its main border crossing with Belarus, a day after a Minsk court jailed Andrzej Poczobut, a Polish activist and journalist, for eight years on charges of inciting hatred. The charge is often used by Belarus against critics of its autocratic leader, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko.

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For Kyiv residents, Biden’s visit was unlike any other.

And the clogged roads seemed a minor inconvenience given the cause: President Biden was in town.

“Officially, today was the most pleasant many-hours traffic jam on Kyiv streets in all the history of independence,” said Serhiy Koshman, a 41-year-old business consultant. After so much hardship, so much trauma, he said, the visit of the American president was a moment to reflect on the past and be hopeful for the future.

Mr. Koshman looked at a headline on his phone from a year ago predicting that Kyiv could fall in a matter of days. Then he pulled up a picture from Monday, showing Mr. Biden and his own president, Volodymyr Zelensky, embracing in the heart of the city.

“I even cried of happiness for it,” he said. “It’s euphoric, something psychological.”

Mr. Biden’s tour through Kyiv, a closely held secret until he arrived, started at the gilded halls of the Mariinskyi Palace, the official residence of Mr. Zelensky. Then he traveled to St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, and finally to the United States Embassy before departing by train for Poland.

With each stop, the shroud of secrecy surrounding his visit began to fall, and the excitement of Ukrainians grew.

Since Russia invaded a year ago this week, Kyiv has played host to scores of prime ministers, presidents and world leaders. Hollywood stars have come to offer their support and global icons from the world of music have staged clandestine concerts deep in the capital’s underground.

But Mr. Biden’s visit on Monday was unlike any that had come before.

Central Kyiv was locked down, the streets closed to cars and hastily erected barriers blocking pedestrians. By early morning, social media was rife with rumors about a presidential visit, and Ukrainian officials hinted that a historic event was underway.

By the time Mr. Biden stood outside St. Michael’s with Mr. Zelensky, camera crews were positioned in the distance to capture the scene. Images of Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelensky strolling in the sunshine were soon playing on a loop across Ukrainian television channels.

The shock and confusion in the weeks after Russia invaded faded long ago. Ukrainians, for the most part, have stopped being afraid of Moscow and have channeled their anger into a deep determination to carry on.

Many of the people now living in Kyiv are transplants from cities in the east and south occupied or destroyed by the Russians. New cafes continue to open, and they are invariably buzzing. After several months this winter when it seemed that the city could be plunged into darkness at any moment as Russian bombardments triggered rolling blackouts, this past weekend, for the first time, there was no need for power cuts in Kyiv.

But the daily threat of attack still looms.

As Mr. Biden and Mr. Zelensky paid tribute to fallen Ukrainian soldiers outside the monastery, an air-raid alarm sounded and scores of residents went to underground shelters.

In recent days, Ukrainian officials have stepped up their warnings that Moscow is likely to unleash large-scale aerial bombardment to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the war on Friday.

“Everything Russians have at hand will be used, because they have tried everything,” Yuriy Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said over the weekend. “The only thing they are capable of is to intimidate Ukraine and the world with some apocalypse weapon.”

In the metro station under Kyiv’s Independence Square, Viktoria Sulyma, 23, was taking shelter.

Ms. Sulyma hadbeen preparing to shoot a dance video when the alarm sounded. She and her friends were cautious, but not frightened. Even as they waited for the all-clear signal, they applied makeup so that when they went back outside, they would be ready to dance.

Mr. Biden’s visit coincided with a solemn day in Ukraine. On Feb. 20, 2014, dozens of protesters were killed by snipers and police officers as the Kremlin-backed president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, tried to cling to power.

Ukraine’s desire to break free of Russia’s yoke and assert its independence set in motion the chain of events that led to Russia’s unprovoked invasion a year ago and the largest land war in Europe since the end of World War II.

As Mr. Biden moved across the city, Independence Square was largely silent. Some women hung white paper doves outside a memorial chapel. Fresh flowers were placed by the names of those killed in the 2014 protest, and in the evening candles were lit in their honor.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said that the American president’s visit — and its timing — “sends a powerful message to our enemy: Tyranny will not defeat the Free World!”

Ukrainian media and people on the streets echoed that feeling.

“Biden said in Kyiv that Putin’s ‘War of Conquest’ is Failing,” read a headline in Ukrainska Pravda.

Months of punishing missile bombardment have failed to break the nation’s resolve. And even as fighting raged across eastern and southern Ukraine, Mr. Biden’s pledge of more military assistance gave this war-weary nation confidence.

Whatever Moscow may have planned in the coming days, months or years, Ukrainian residents and officials alike said the support of the United States meant brighter days lie ahead.

For months, St. Michael’s had been forced to keep its monuments in the dark to conserve power. As night fell on Monday and Mr. Biden made his way toward the Polish border, the lights came on to light up on the monastery.

“We, in fact, have survived the winter, which is coming to an end,” said Hanna Mailar, a deputy minister of defense. “It’s time to win.”

Carlotta Gall, Natalia Yermak and Oleksandr Chubko contributed reporting from Kyiv.

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One year into the war, Putin is crafting the Russia he craves.

The grievance, paranoia and imperialist mind-set that drove President Vladimir V. Putin to invade Ukraine have seeped deep into Russian life after a year of war — a broad, if uneven, societal upheaval that has left the Russian leader more dominant than ever at home.

Schoolchildren collect empty cans to make candles for soldiers in the trenches, while learning in a new weekly class that the Russian military has always liberated humanity from “aggressors who seek world domination.”

Museums and theaters, which remained islands of artistic freedom during previous crackdowns, have seen that special status evaporate, their antiwar performers and artists expunged. New exhibits put on by the state have titles like “NATOzism” — a play on “Nazism” that seeks to cast the Western military alliance as posing a threat as existential as the Nazis of World War II.

Many of the activist groups and rights organizations that sprung up in the first 30 years of post-Soviet Russia have met an abrupt end, while nationalist groups once seen as fringe have taken center stage.

As Friday’s first anniversary of the invasion approaches, Russia’s military has suffered setback after setback, falling far short of its goal of taking control of Ukraine. But at home, facing little resistance, Mr. Putin’s year of war has allowed him to go further than many thought possible in reshaping Russia in his image.

Germany trains Ukrainians on tanks, which it says will be delivered next month.

The soldiers, only some of whom came with previous experience on battle tanks, are getting ready before Germany exports 14 Leopard tanks and 40 Marder armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine within weeks.

“By the end of March, the tanks, both the Leopards and the Marder, will be delivered and then the training will also be completed,” Boris Pistorius, Germany’s minister of defense, said on Monday during a visit to the training facility. He was joined by Wladimir Klitschko, a Ukrainian former heavyweight boxing champion and the brother of the mayor of Kyiv, who came to thank both Ukrainian soldiers and German trainers.

After months of pressure, Germany announced its intention last month to send 14 modern Leopard 2A6 battle tanks, which it said would be the start of a 31-tank battalion. Poland, which is assembling a battalion of older-generation Leopard 2A4 tanks, is also training crews to operate those systems.

German officials said that they were training 14 four-man crews to operate the Leopard 2 and 40 nine-man crews to operate the Marder infantry vehicles, along with reserves.

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The long train ride to Kyiv has become a staple of wartime diplomacy.

Ukrzaliznytsia, the Ukrainian national railway, operates a dozen or so special wagons for diplomatic delegations, where visiting dignitaries are treated to Ukrainian cuisine prepared by top chefs. The cars include bunks for sleeping and a conference table that can seat about 10 people.

While the details of how President Biden traveled to Kyiv on Monday were not disclosed for security reasons, an American official who asked not to be identified said that Mr. Biden had made a 10-hour journey by train from the Polish border, as other American officials have in recent months.

All flights in Ukraine, other than those by military jets or helicopters, have been grounded since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly a year ago. President Volodymyr Zelensky and officials in his government sometimes travel by helicopter, flying fast and low to the ground to avoid the risk of being detected by Russian jets.

But trains have been the transportation mode of choice for most foreign leaders, and for Mr. Zelensky himself.

The first foreign leaders to make the railway journey following Russia’s invasion were the Polish, Czech and Slovenian prime ministers, who traveled together to Kyiv last March. Since then, the Ukrainian railway company has arranged about 250 diplomatic train rides, said Oleksandr Shevchenko, an official with the railway company who helps oversee the service it calls “iron diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy is a crucial role for the railways,” Mr. Shevchenko said in a telephone interview. “The railway is the only means for diplomats to get into and out of the country safely.”

The travel is usually coordinated by the security services of Ukraine and the visiting leader’s government, he said. The timing and route are closely held secrets, he added: as few as half a dozen employees of the railway company know the details. The train can be slowed, or sped up, to avoid threats if air raid alarms go off, or even rerouted mid-journey if needed.

The time spent on the train, as long as 10 hours one-way, forms an important part of the visits, Mr. Shevchenko said. Employees try to provide the visiting official with a sense of the country, including with a Ukrainian meal en route. “The people on these trips spend more time with the train crew than with the president of Ukraine,” he noted.

“The train car is the first and the last thing the person sees,” he said.

Russia has brought more troops to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Ukraine says.

Ukraine’s state nuclear company, Energoatom, said on Monday that Russia was housing 600 newly mobilized troops in a bomb shelter at the plant. It also said that Russian forces had placed a machine-gun position on top of a power unit, erected roadblocks and built fortifications near power units and a storage area for spent nuclear fuel.

Energoatom said that the new troops were en route to be deployed in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, where a renewed Russian offensive is getting underway, but it said that the security threat at the facility had been raised by its increased militarization.

“Such actions of the Russians are categorically unacceptable and violate all existing norms of nuclear and radiation safety,” Energoatom said in a post on the Telegram social messaging app, reiterating its calls for Russia to withdraw its forces from the plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has repeatedly called for a security zone to be established around the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

A team of inspectors from the agency has been based at the Zaporizhzhia facility since last September, part of efforts to monitor security and safety conditions after shelling of and around the complex amplified fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe. Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for the attacks, and Ukraine has accused Russia of using the plant as a base for artillery strikes on nearby towns.

The teams of inspectors operate on a rotation schedule, which requires them to be driven across the front lines when they come in and out. The agency said on Feb. 10 that military activity at Zaporizhzhia and the need to ensure the inspectors’ security had interfered with a scheduled rotation of the team, which is its fifth so far.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the rotation had yet to take place because of the troop buildup. It urged the international community to take action.

“If not stopped, Russia’s criminal actions at the Ukrainian nuclear facility could lead to a catastrophe,” the ministry said in a statement.

With the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaching on Friday, Ukrainian officials have warned that the Kremlin might launch a missile bombardment tied to the anniversary. All six of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia are now shut down, and the I.A.E.A. said that power had been reduced at two of the three other plants still in operation as a precautionary measure given the missile threat.

On Saturday, Energoatom reported that two Russian cruise missiles had flown “dangerously low” over the South Ukraine nuclear plant in the Mykolaiv region. It described the incident as an act of nuclear terrorism.

Russia’s ministry of defense made no reference to the power plant on Monday in its daily update on the military operation in Ukraine.

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A New York Times photographer was with Biden in Kyiv.

The two leaders visited the golden-domed St. Michael’s monastery and the Wall of Remembrance, where portraits are displayed of more than 4,500 soldiers who have died since 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula and backed armed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Mr. Biden also visited the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv and then left the city, although the details of his travels have not been made public for security reasons. He is expected to travel to Warsaw to deliver a speech on Tuesday, and to meet with President Andrzej Duda of Poland and leaders of other NATO allies in Eastern Europe.

On Russian state TV, Biden’s visit is cast as a political stunt.

Mr. Biden’s visit was a hot topic on Russian state television, along with the Munich Security Conference, the annual gathering held over the weekend at which U.S. and European leaders made a show of backing Ukraine. Russian representatives were not invited this year.

Moscow has increasingly pushed the narrative that Russia is fighting a full-scale war against a colonialist NATO, falsely describing Ukraine as being run by Nazis, while asserting that the Kremlin has the best interests of Ukrainians at heart. On state-run talk shows, other analysts described Ukraine’s leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “puppet” of Mr. Biden, and cast the visit as a stunt by the American leader before an announcement that he would seek a second term.

“Residents of Ukraine should cry when they look at this visit,” said the pro-government analyst Sergei A. Markov on the show “60 Minutes,” which runs on state television. He added that the visit’s purpose was “to glorify the interests of the American Reich, which, in fact, is now represented by Joe Biden.”

Influential Russian opinion formers maintain that the war is a struggle for the establishment of a multipolar world order in which Russia maintains a sphere of influence. Vladimir Rogov, a member of the council of administration in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, which Russia illegally declared to be part of its territory last year, said after Mr. Biden’s visit that Ukraine was caught up in a “big game” that would conclude “only when everyone is dead.”