Volodymyr Zelensky is meeting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris at the White House to discuss his “victory plan”, which the Ukrainian president hopes will pressure Russia into agreeing a diplomatic end to the war.
Details have been kept secret, but Zelensky is likely to ask the US president and vice-president for continuing military and financial support, as well as security guarantees.
It comes amid a row with Donald Trump and the Republican party ahead of November’s US presidential election.
They were angered by Zelensky’s visit to an arms factory in Biden’s hometown of Scranton with top Democrats. Zelensky will meet Trump on Friday despite earlier reports that the meeting had been cancelled.
Zelensky’s visit to the ammunition factory in the key swing state of Pennsylvania was labelled by leading Republicans as a partisan campaign event.
In a public letter, speaker of the US House Mike Johnson said the visit was “designed to help Democrats” and claimed it amounted to “election interference”.
He also demanded that Ukraine fire its ambassador to Washington who helped arrange the visit.
The Republican-led House Oversight Committee has also announced it would investigate whether Zelensky’s trip was an attempt to use a foreign leader to benefit Harris’s campaign.
Her Republican rival for the presidency, Donald Trump, mocked Zelensky at a campaign event as the “greatest salesman on Earth” and accused him of refusing to “make a deal” with Moscow.
Earlier this week, Trump also praised Russia’s military capabilities, saying: “They beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon – that’s what they do, they fight.”
The two men have long had a fractious relationship. In 2019, Trump was impeached by the US House over accusations that he pressured Ukraine’s leader to dig up damaging information on a political rival.
The row clouded a week in which Zelensky has twice addressed the United Nations, ramping up efforts to persuade the US and other allies to boost support more than two and a half years into Russia’s full-scale invasion.
At the White House meetings, Zelensky is expected to push again for US backing to fire Western-made long-range missiles deep into Russian territory, which Biden has so far blocked.
Before the meeting, Biden said: “Let me be clear, Russia will not prevail in war… Ukraine will prevail”.
He also pledged to support Kyiv “in its path to membership to both the EU and Nato”.
Meanwhile, Zelensky thanked the US for its “unwavering bipartisan support”.
He later met Harris, with the vice-president reiterating her support for Ukraine and arguing the US must continue its role of global leadership.
With Russian troops advancing in the east of Ukraine, the outcome of Zelensky’s meeting with Biden and Harris is seen by many experts as a key moment in his attempt to shore up US support before the November election.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Vladimir Putin announced a plan to revise Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, to enable Russia to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states if they are supported by nuclear states.
Putin’s spokesperson later clarified that it was meant as a “specific signal” to the West.
Putin proposes new rules for using nuclear weapons
Reuters President Volodymyr Zelensky signs ammunition while visiting the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant (SCAAP) in Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA, on 23 September 2024Reuters
President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant alongside top Democrats on Friday
Hours before his meeting with Zelensky, Biden announced a $7.9bn (£5.9bn) package of military assistance to Ukraine.
The aid, part of a $61bn package that passed Congress in April, will be approved through presidential drawdown authority and will pull from existing Pentagon supplies to deliver the arms more quickly.
Congressional Republicans blocked the package for months earlier this year, before ultimately relenting and passing the legislation. The delay caused arms supplies to Ukraine to dry up for several months.
Zelensky thanked the US – Ukraine’s largest foreign donor.
At the same time, he also reportedly expressed frustration at the delay in delivering weapons that were already promised when he met US congressmen on Thursday morning.
BBC