Jill Biden’s secret Ukraine trip

Jill Biden, the first lady, traveled to western Ukraine in an unannounced trip Sunday, the latest show of support from the United States, which in recent weeks has significantly increased military aid for Ukraine and sent others close to President Joe Biden into the country.

Jill Biden met Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, at a school converted to assist refugees who had come from other parts of the country to Uzhhorod, a town of 100,000 people a few miles from the border with Slovakia. Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, had not been seen in public since Russia’s invasion began Feb. 24.

“I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop, and this war has been brutal,” Biden told reporters as she sat at a table across from Zelenska, “and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”

Biden made her trip on a day of public displays of support for Ukraine, with visits from Bono and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, and as rescuers searched for survivors from a Russian airstrike on a school in the east that officials feared had left dozens dead. In Kyiv, a team of senior American diplomats returned to the U.S. Embassy for the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, a move that coincided with Victory in Europe Day.

The day was a patchwork of the hopeful and the foreboding. Her visit also came as Western officials were bracing for the possibility that President Vladimir Putin of Russia might use his country’s Victory Day holiday, which falls Monday, as a reason to intensify attacks on Ukrainian citizens.

Ukrainian officials understand the emotional power of social media and headlines written by the Western press and have invited an assortment of Western officials — and Bono — into the country in recent days. They reached out several days before Biden’s planned four-day tour of Eastern Europe to suggest a meeting with Zelenska in Ukraine, according to Michael LaRosa, the first lady’s spokesman.

Such a high-stakes visit is a rarity for any sitting first lady; they do not usually visit war zones, and the last one to travel to one alone was Laura Bush, who visited Afghanistan in 2008. Biden, an English professor who teaches full time, has so far spent much of her time as first lady traveling the United States, urging Americans to take vaccines and support community colleges, or touting Joe Biden’s plans for social spending.

Until now, she has had comparatively little to say about Ukraine, but her full-throated call for an end to the war Sunday was a departure that reflected the bolder and broader steps the Biden administration has taken to move against Russian aggression without engaging Moscow in an all-out war.