1 Year of Ukraine War: Can Biden's Daring Visit to Kyiv Win Him a Second Term Back Home?

“One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands,” he said at the Mariinsky Palace, the Ukrainian president’s official residence.

And on Tuesday, from Warsaw’s historic Royal Castle, Biden will “make it clear that the United States will continue to stand with Ukraine… for as long as it takes”, according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who spoke to reporters last week.

But Will This Help Secure a Second Term for Biden?

The answer is unclear. According to a report by Telegraph, Russia’s incursion has shown a deepening schism inside the Republican Party over America’s position on the world stage. A small but important minority opposes funding Kyiv and is even slightly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, while foreign policy hawks feel Washington should do far more to challenge Moscow.

But with surveys showing that the public is becoming tired of the high expense of subsidising Ukraine, Ron DeSantis has assessed the national mood and saw an opportunity to target Joe Biden, the report said. In an unexpected comment on Monday, he slammed Biden’s unrestrained funding of Ukraine in response to the US president’s unannounced visit to Kyiv.

“I think it’s important to point out, the fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that, and steamrolling, that has not even come close to happening,” he said in a Fox interview, as per a report by the Guardian.

As per the analysis in the Guardian by Julian Borger, the success of Biden’s visit in emphasising the US commitment to Ukrainian resistance may wind up ‘hastening Republicans’ movement towards anti-Ukrainian attitudes, which are presently the property of a pro-Trump minority on the party’s far right’, while the leadership seeks attack lines against Biden.

Waning Popularity

Borger suggests that Biden’s popularity slump has not improved, despite the recent excellent economic data, a decent legislative record, and what he describes as a ‘vibrant, confrontational performance in his State of the Union speech’. According to an average of recent polls, he says, people who disapprove of his performance exceed those who approve by a margin of 52% to 42%.

Most of the problem stems from the widespread perception that Biden, at 80, is too old, doddery, and prone to gaffes to lead the country with vim, particularly into a second term, Borger says.

According to the analyst, the ‘daring appearance in Kyiv’, wandering across the city in aviator sunglasses with a grateful and appreciative Volodymyr Zelenskiy, on the American Presidents Day holiday, was designed to confront that notion and redefine the discourse on age and fitness for office.

President Joe Biden’s surprise visit Monday morning to wartime Kyiv began in the dead of night at a military airport hangar outside Washington, AFP reported. At 4:00 am Sunday — unbeknown to the world’s media, the Washington political establishment or American voters — the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, known as a C-32.

The plane, a smaller version of the one US presidents normally use on international trips, was parked well away from where Biden would usually board. And a telling detail: the shade on every window had been pulled down. Fifteen minutes later, Biden, a handful of security personnel, a small medical team, close advisors, and two journalists who had been sworn to secrecy, took off en route to a war zone. This, despite the US president being perhaps the most constantly scrutinized person on the planet, the report said.

With inputs from AFP

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