World ‘Cannot Let Up’ on Ukraine, Biden Says at UN Meeting

US President Joe Biden has called on fellow UN member states to continue supporting Ukraine during his final address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

He said Kyiv’s “NATO allies and partners and 50-plus nations stood up” when Russia launched its invasion in February 2022 and called on the meeting’s attendants to stand up in solidarity with Ukraine.

“Most importantly, the Ukrainian people stood up. I asked the people in this chamber to stand up for them,” Biden said.

He also said Russia’s invasion, as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal to subjugate Ukraine, had failed as Ukraine continued to stand strong, and that NATO became stronger as a result of Moscow’s invasion, contrary to what Putin believed prior to the invasion.

“The good news is, Putin’s war has failed, and as has his core aim,” Biden added. “He set out to destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is still free. He set out to weaken NATO, but NATO is bigger, stronger, more united than ever before, with two new members, Finland and Sweden.”

“But we cannot let up,” Biden added, a notion some interpreted as an allusion to US Republican nominee Donald Trump’s stance on Ukraine that led to concerns that US support for Kyiv would diminish should Trump return to office.

Despite Biden’s vocal support for Ukraine, there are also criticisms in some quarters of his administration’s indecision to allow Kyiv to strike deep inside Russian territories using Western long-range weapons – an issue expected to be among the discussions between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western counterparts this week.

Other Topics of Interest

Will They Deserve to Even be Called “Negotiations”?

Just because two opposing parties arrive at a table does not mean that the ensuing events will necessarily qualify as “negotiations.”

Zelensky was expected to address the UN meeting later in the day.