White House rules out Biden’s visit to Ukraine on Europe trip

The White House on Sunday ruled out U.S. President Joe Biden visiting Ukraine during his trip to Europe this week, where he will meet with allies to address the Russian invasion of its neighboring country.  

"The trip will focus on continuing to rally the world in support of the Ukrainian people and against President Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but there are no plans to travel to Ukraine," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki clarified on Twitter.

We will have additional details of @potus trip to Europe to announce later today. The trip will be focused on continuing to rally the world in support of the Ukrainian people and against President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,
but there are no plans to travel into Ukraine.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) March 20, 2022

Biden will travel to Brussels on Wednesday to participate on Thursday in a NATO summit, a European Union (EU) summit, and a G7 summit, the latter convened by Germany, which holds the rotating presidency of the group of the world's most industrialized nations.

This would be the second time Biden will attend a NATO leaders' summit in Brussels in person, after the summit held last June 14 after attending another G7 summit in Cornwall, southwest England, from June 11 to 13 of the same month.  

The president is also expected to visit Poland, a border country where millions of Ukrainians have arrived to escape Russian attacks.

Psaki said in a brief statement that Biden will travel to Warsaw from the Belgian capital to meet with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda.

"The president will address how the United States, together with our allies and partners, is responding to the humanitarian and human rights crisis created by Russia's unjustified and premeditated war against Ukraine," Psaki said.