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FIRST LADY JILL BIDEN VISITS UKRAINE IN RARE TRIP TO WAR ZONE


THE UNANNOUNCED VISIT ENHANCED THE ROLE SHE HAS CARVED OUT ON THE ISSUE THAT HAS
DOMINATED AND RESHAPED AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY OVER THE PAST THREE MONTHS.

By Tyler Pager
and 
Matt Viser
 
Yesterday at 9:24 a.m. EDT|Updated yesterday at 3:26 p.m. EDT
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8 min

First lady Jill Biden visits Ukraine
First lady Jill Biden visited Ukraine on May 8 to call an end to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine.


First lady Jill Biden visited Ukraine on May 8 to call an end to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. (Video: The Washington Post)
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UZHHOROD, Ukraine — First lady Jill Biden crossed the border into Ukraine on
Sunday, traveling to an active war zone in a rare move for the spouse of a
sitting president.

Biden entered the country from Slovakia on Mother’s Day and met Ukraine’s first
lady, Olena Zelenska, who had not appeared in public since the Russian invasion
began Feb. 24.

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“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Biden said before the start of a closed-door
meeting between the two first ladies. “I thought it was important to show the
Ukrainian people that this war has to stop, and this war has been brutal, and
that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”

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Zelenska praised Biden “for a very courageous act” in coming to Ukraine.

“We understand what it takes for the U.S. first lady to come here during a war
when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are
happening every day, even today,” she said in Ukrainian through an interpreter.

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The unannounced visit came amid a four-day swing through Eastern Europe for
Biden — her highest-profile diplomatic engagement since President Biden took
office and part of a broader effort to show continued U.S. support for Ukraine.

For Jill Biden, a trip into Ukraine — stopping in a country that neither
President Biden nor Vice President Harris visited during their recent trips to
the region — enhanced the role she has carved out on the issue that has
dominated and reshaped American foreign policy over the past three months.

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And she did it while focusing on her priorities: education, military families
and mental health. A longtime educator, she visited schools in each of the three
countries she traveled to, met with troops at a military base and emphasized the
need for mental health services for refugees during her humanitarian visits and
briefings.

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Her visit to Ukraine came the day before Russia’s Victory Day, which some U.S.
officials worry will bring a new, even more violent phase of the war. It also
followed fresh attacks in eastern Ukraine, where an official said Russian forces
bombed a school that was serving as a shelter, leaving as many as 60 people
buried under the rubble and feared dead.

Previous first ladies made overseas visits to support U.S. troops stationed
abroad, but few have visited an active war zone on their own. Laura Bush twice
traveled solo to Kabul, in 2005 and 2008, and during the first trip, she met
with women who were training to be teachers and gave presents to Afghan children
on the street.

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The first lady has no official constitutional duties and has largely served a
ceremonial role. But in taking an active role in her husband’s presidency, Jill
Biden is fulfilling a vision for the role that she has contemplated for decades.

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In July 1987, she strolled to a podium in Des Moines, a stack of papers in her
hand, and looked out into the crowded room as she outlined what, in her mind,
makes a good first lady.

“There is no one specific right role,” she said. “But there is one objective:
And that is to make Americans feel proud of their first lady and to feel that in
some way she is a reflection of their lives and their values.”

Her remarks came as her husband was running his first presidential campaign.
Now, nearly 35 years later, she has been a central figure in the White House,
acting as a key fundraiser, a campaign surrogate — and now as a high-profile
emissary to a war-torn country.

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Biden has identified herself as a military mom, an educator and a defender of
her husband, who often introduces himself not as the president of the United
States but as: “Jill Biden’s husband.”

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The only first lady to have kept her professional career after her husband
entered the White House — continuing to teach at a community college — has made
clear that she has a second job, too, one that for now is attempting to showcase
empathy and understanding in the most dire of circumstances.

She has worn a mask decorated with a sunflower, the official flower of Ukraine,
and during the State of the Union address she had the flower embroidered onto
the right sleeve of her dress.

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“I talk to Joe every day about what’s going on in Ukraine,” she said in March,
launching a campaign push for the midterms. “And I want you to know that he is
working tirelessly to bring people together, to bring the NATO countries
together, so that they can stand up against Putin.”

Each morning, she recounted during an earlier fundraiser, she turns on the
television, praying that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still alive.
Each night, the sleeping is not always easy.

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“The phone just never stops ringing, all through the night,” she said. “And Joe
is up, trying to help solve this crisis.”

The course of the conflict is impossible to determine, she said during a San
Francisco fundraiser in March.

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“We just don’t know,” she said. “And we’re all just holding our breath, aren’t
we? That something, some answer will come so that we don’t get into this world
war.”

“It’s unbelievable, right?” she added. “To think that that could happen in our
lifetime.”





Her visit Sunday with Zelenska follows correspondence between the two first
ladies over the last few weeks, said Michael LaRosa, a spokesman for the first
lady. He said Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., gave Biden
a letter from Zelenska at the March 1 State of the Union address, which
Markarova attended as one of Biden’s guests.

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Zelenska sent another letter to Biden in April expressing concern about the
long-term effects that the war will have on Ukrainian children, soldiers and
families, LaRosa said.

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Here in Uzhhorod at a school now being used as temporary housing for displaced
Ukrainians, the first ladies held a roughly 30-minute private meeting, during
which Zelenska said the mental health of Ukrainians was her biggest worry,
LaRosa said.

The two women then visited a classroom and sat down at a table with children
working on art projects for their mothers. The children were crafting cardboard
and tissue paper bears, representing the symbol of the Zakarpattia oblast, where
the school is located.

Biden’s trip to Ukraine follows two high-profile visits from American leaders in
recent weeks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led a congressional
delegation to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky late last month, following a trip by
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

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Biden’s visit came the same day that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
traveled to Kyiv to meet Zelensky and Bono, the lead singer of the rock band U2
who performed in a subway station turned bomb shelter there.

Back in Wilmington, Del., Joe Biden joined other Group of Seven leaders on video
call with Zelensky. The leaders of the world’s biggest economies announced
Sunday they would phase out the use of Russian oil and gas. The United States
has already banned Russian oil, gas and coal, but many European countries have
been more gradual in whittling down their heavy reliance on Russian resources.
The leaders did not specify a timeline for the bans.



Before crossing the border, Jill Biden visited a bus station in Kosice,
Slovakia, where local officials and nongovernmental organizations have set up a
refugee processing center. The first lady heard emotional stories from refugees
who fled Ukraine but still expressed a strong desire to return to their home
country.

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Victoria Kutocha, a mother of three whose husband remained in Ukraine to fight
in the military, told Biden of her journey to Slovakia and her outrage at
Russia’s explanation for its invasion.

“They come to our land,” she told Biden. “They kill us, but they say we protect
you.”

Hugging her 7-year-old daughter, Yulie, Kutocha described the difficulty of
explaining to her children why they had to leave their home. “It’s impossible,”
she said. “I try to keep them safe. It’s my mission.”

“It’s senseless,” Biden said.

Biden began her trip in Romania, where she met troops at the Mihail Kogalniceanu
Air Base and visited a school in Bucharest hosting Ukrainian children. On
Monday, she is slated to meet with Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova in
Bratislava.

But it was her unannounced trip to Ukraine on Mother’s Day that best illustrated
how Biden sees her role as the nation’s first lady.

“Maybe it’s Jill Biden’s calling to meet with children who had education
disrupted, their housing and basic wants and needs disrupted,” said Katherine
Jellison, a professor at Ohio University whose research has focused on first
ladies. “Maybe she sees this as an extension of her role as educator.”

During Biden’s remarks in Iowa that day in 1987, she said that she would hope
that she could continue teaching part-time if she became first lady, something
that she has continued to do now.

“My own personal view is that the first lady should respond to the concerns and
interests of today’s American women,” she said. “Women who are mothers, who are
spouses and who are wage earners. Women who are struggling to balance all three
roles. And I think that they would identify with a first lady who is also trying
to balance those three roles.”

Viser reported from Washington.


WAR IN UKRAINE: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

The latest: As the last of the civilian women, children and elderly were
evacuated from a steel plant that has been a stronghold of Ukrainian resistance
in Mariupol, Kyiv’s defense of the strategic port city appeared to be nearing an
end, with President Volodymyr Zelensky and a Ukrainian commander at the plant
appealing for the evacuation of fighters and their wounded.

The fight: Russian forces continue to mount sporadic attacks on civilian targets
in a number of Ukrainian cities. Ukrainian prosecutors have been taking detailed
testimony from victims to investigate Russian war crimes.

The weapons: Ukraine is making use of weapons such as Javelin antitank missiles
and Switchblade “kamikaze” drones, provided by the United States and other
allies. Russia has used an array of weapons against Ukraine, some of which have
drawn the attention and concern of analysts.

Photos: Post photographers have been on the ground from the very beginning of
the war — here’s some of their most powerful work.

How you can help: Here are ways those in the U.S. can help support the Ukrainian
people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Are you on Telegram?
Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video.

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