US President Joe Biden reaffirmed on Saturday March 26 in Warsaw that Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance’s founding treaty, providing that an attack on one member country is an attack on all, constitutes a “sacred duty” for the United States.
Arrived the day before in Poland, a country on the eastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and bordering Ukraine, Mr. Biden reaffirmed this principle during his meeting with the Polish President, Andrzej Duda, whose country fears the aggressiveness of Moscow after the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Repeating that for Americans Article 5 is “a sacred obligation”he added : “You can count on it”before quoting an old Polish maxim: “For our freedom and yours. » This formula, which dates from a Polish insurrection against the occupation by Tsarist Russia, was intended to show the Russians that the uprising should also free them from the despotism of the Tsars.
Mr. Biden also said that the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, “counted on a divided NATO”but that this division did not occur.
For his part, Mr. Duda said that Polish-American relations were “thriving” and would be “tremendously enhanced” by the visit of his guest, and finally that his country was an ally ” serious “ the United States. He spoke of future cooperation with American companies in nuclear power plant projects in Poland and hoped that Polish aeronautical companies could participate in the manufacture of American Black Hawk helicopters.
More than 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the start of the war; 2 million of them are in Poland. Earlier this week, the United States announced that it would welcome up to 100,000 refugees. Mr. Biden told Mr. Duda that he understood that Poland “assumed a great responsibility, but [que] it should be NATO’s responsibility”.
Joe Biden calls Vladimir Putin a “butcher”
The President of the United States also called his Russian counterpart a « boucher » for crimes allegedly committed by Moscow in Ukraine. Mr. Biden also said he doubted that the Russian army really intended to refocus its military offensive on the east of this country, as it announced the day before.
A little more than a month after the outbreak of war by the Kremlin, the Russian command has indeed created the surprise by announcing, on Friday, “to concentrate the bulk of the efforts on the main objective: liberation” of the Donbass mining basin, contrasting with the will displayed by Moscow until then to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine” as a whole and not only in this eastern region where there are two pro-Russian separatist “republics”.
In a statement likely to bolster Mr Biden’s disbelief, the governor of Lviv region in western Ukraine explained that the major city – so far relatively spared from fighting – had suffered two Russian strikes that injured at least five people on Saturday afternoon. Agence France-Presse (AFP) saw large billows of black smoke and flames rising above a district of the agglomeration.
” I am not sure “ that Russian intentions have changed, Biden said after visiting Ukrainian refugees hosted in the Polish capital. Asked about “what he thought of Vladimir Putin, given what he inflicts” to the Ukrainian people, Mr. Biden, who had twice called the Russian president twice “war criminal”responded : “He’s a butcher. »
“A head of state must remain thoughtful”reacted the spokesman of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, with the Russian news agency TASS. “Of course, each time, personal insults like this reduce the scope of our bilateral relations with the current US government. »
“Unwavering Commitment”
The President of the United States met, on Saturday, in Warsaw with members of the government of kyiv for the first time since the invasion of their country by Russia, on February 24.
During a meeting with the head of Ukrainian diplomacy, Dmytro Kuleba, and the Ukrainian defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, which was also attended by their American counterparts, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, discussions focused in particular on “the unwavering commitment of the United States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine”State Department spokesman Ned Price said.
For his part, the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, accused Moscow of fueling a dangerous arms race by highlighting its nuclear arsenal, during a video intervention at the Doha Forum. He called on Qatar, one of the main liquefied natural gas exporting countries, to increase its production to counter Russian threats to use energy “to blackmail”.