Joe Biden visited US soldiers on the Polish border with Ukraine: “We are in the middle of a struggle between democracies and oligarchs”

On Friday, US President Joe Biden visited US soldiers deployed near the Polish border with Ukraine, whom he defined as “the best fighting force in the history of the world.”

Biden sat down for pizza lunch with some members of the 82nd Airborne Division of the US Armed Forces, displaced to Poland to reinforce NATO's eastern flank after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “We are in the middle of, and I don't want to sound too philosophical, but in the middle of a struggle between democracies and oligarchs,” the president said.

He continued: “The world will not be the same, not because of Ukraine, but it will not be the same in 10 or 15 years in terms of our organizational structures. The question is: Who will prevail? Will our democracy prevail and the values we share? Or will autocracies prevail? And that is really what is at stake. So what they are doing (he told the soldiers) is consistent, really consistent.”

Then, he said: “I spent a lot of time in Ukraine when I was a senator and vice-president. I spoke to the Rada (Parliament) in the days when they did not actually have what you would call 'democracy' and I was there in Maidan when the former leader (former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych) had to take off and lead Russia. And so, you know, with the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian people have a lot of backbones and a lot of guts, and I'm sure they're watching it.”

“Thank you very, very much for everything you are doing. You are the best fighting force in the history of the world,” the president also told the soldiers next to the airport of the Polish city of Rzeszów, located about 100 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

The president told the military an anecdote about how his son Beau, who died in 2015, did not want to use the surname Biden so as not to attract attention when he was deployed as a fighter in the Iraq war.

Dressed without a tie and clearly in a good mood, Biden told the soldiers that he wanted to have lunch with them and immediately got himself a piece of pizza with pepperoni and jalapeno, the itching of which caused his tears to jump.

The president chatted cheerfully with the uniformed men and then went to different tables to greet them all.

Shortly before, the president visited a room where fourteen soldiers were waiting to cut their hair, and joked with them that if he went to the hairdresser, there would be “not much” to cut.

The city of Rzeszów, just over an hour's drive from the Ukrainian border, has become a kind of logistics hub in Poland, which has received more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees.

Rzeszów is the first stop in Poland for Biden, who tomorrow, Saturday, will meet Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw and give a speech on the allied response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine before flying back to Washington.

(With information from EFE)

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