Ukrainian president kicks off high-risk trip with visit to arms factory in Pennsylvania
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has begun a high-risk visit to the United States, during which he will present kyiv's plan to end the more than two-and-a-half-year war against invading Russian forces to US President Joe Biden, as well as his election rivals Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Zelensky, who will also attend the annual United Nations meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, urged Ukraine’s allies to help achieve “a shared victory for a truly just peace.”
He is expected to present his peace proposals, which he has called a “victory plan,” to Biden on Thursday, before meeting later with Harris, who is vice president. His office has said he hopes to meet Republican nominee Trump on Thursday or Friday, though no date has been officially announced.
The Ukrainian president is in the United States after a summer of intense fighting, with Moscow advancing in eastern Ukraine and kyiv occupying parts of Russia's Kursk region.
Zelenskyy made an unexpected stop under extraordinarily tight security at a Pennsylvania munitions plant that makes 155-millimeter artillery shells.
The missiles are vital to Ukraine's war effort and it has already received more than three million of them from the United States.
“I started my visit to the United States by expressing my gratitude to all the plant employees,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X, including photos of himself shaking hands with factory workers.
“It is in places like this that you can really feel that the democratic world can prevail,” he wrote.
No details have been made public about Ukraine's latest peace proposals.
Zelenskyy said Biden would be the first foreign leader to see the plan “in its entirety” and that it would then also be presented to “all leaders of our partner countries.”
He said the “full plan” would be ready “by early November.”
The proposals, he told reporters on Friday, envisage “rapid and concrete steps by our strategic partners.”
One of those steps, he said, was “related to strengthening Ukraine’s weapons capabilities,” while another called for “a clear place for Ukraine in the global security architecture.”
The 155 mm shells manufactured at the Scranton plant are used in howitzer systems, which are large cannons with long barrels that can hit targets at ranges of 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km).
Zelensky has also been lobbying the United States and other allies to allow him to use Western-supplied long-range weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
Biden has so far resisted, with Moscow saying such an authorization would amount to NATO countries being “at war” with Russia.
Zelensky's visit also coincides with US preparations for a new $375 million military aid package for Ukraine.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters news agency last week that the package would include patrol boats, additional ammunition for high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), as well as 155mm and 105mm artillery ammunition.
