Poland receives Biden expecting a tough message towards Putin

For a US president to visit Poland is not extraordinary. George W. Bush and Barack Obama, for example, did so three times during their terms. Warsaw, however, experiences as particularly historic the visit that Joe Biden has begun, when he landed at noon this Friday in the city of Rzeszów, due to the symbolism that it implies in these moments of the war in neighbouring Ukraine.

The White House National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, has told the media on the presidential plane that the speech that Biden will give on Saturday at the Royal Palace in Warsaw will be “important”. And the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita compares it to the one John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered in West Berlin in 1963 – two years after the hasty construction of the Berlin Wall – and in which he uttered the emblematic phrase “ Ich bin ein Berliner ” which means “I am a Berliner”.

This Friday, Biden dedicated a few brief words to the 82nd Airborne Military Division of the United States Armed Forces in which he advanced his strong ideas: we are experiencing a historical “turning point” that only occurs “every four or five generations” and what is “at stake” (an expression he has repeated three times) in Ukraine is much more than how the war ends.

“You are in the middle of a fight between democracies and oligarchs,” he assured. “What is at stake – and not only in what we are doing here to try to help the Ukrainian people and prevent the massacre from continuing – but beyond, what is at stake is: what is the freedom of your children and grandchildren? You are involved in much more than simply whether you can alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Ukraine. […] The world is not going to be the same – and not because of Ukraine – 10 or 15 years from now in terms of our organizational structures”, she added.