Biden: Commitment to Ukraine ‘unwavering and enduring’

President Biden on Thursday recommitted the United States’s unwavering and enduring support for Ukraine to celebrate Ukraine Independence Day.

“Today, the people of Ukraine are once more marking their Independence Day, while suffering the all-out assault of Putin’s craven war for land and power,” Biden said in a statement. 

“On this Independence Day, as they have since Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, brave Ukrainian women and men are defending Ukraine from assaults on fundamental principles essential to every nation on the planet — sovereignty and territorial integrity. They are showing the world once more that freedom is worth fighting for,” he said.

His comments come the morning after Republican presidential candidates debated whether more aid should be sent to Ukraine. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis both said they would cut off U.S. funding to Ukraine when asked about Biden’s request to Congress for $25 billion in more aid to the war-torn country.

Biden, in his Thursday statement, said Americans are united against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“So today, as Putin continues his brutal war to erase Ukraine’s independence and redraw the map of our world by force, Americans all across the country stand united with the people of Ukraine,” Biden said. “Our commitment to Ukraine’s independence is unwavering and enduring.”

The president outlined work with European partners to help the Ukrainian armed forces and to hold Russia accountable over the past 18 months. 

“I sincerely hope that next year, Ukrainians will be able to celebrate their Independence Day in peace and safety, knowing how their extraordinary courage inspired the world,” Biden said. “May Ukraine’s Independence Day be a reminder that the forces of darkness and dominion will never extinguish the flame of liberty that lives in the heart of free people everywhere.”

On Wednesday, Biden suggested Putin could be behind the plane crash in Russia that may have killed Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was listed as a passenger. Prigozhin led the so-called “March of Justice” that aimed to topple Moscow’s military leadership earlier this summer.

“There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind,” Biden told reporters.