Joe Biden has called off a four-day trip to Germany this week that had been intended to culminate in a summit to discuss Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for Ukraine.
The White House said on Tuesday evening that the president would stay at home “to oversee preparations for and the response” to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
It was not clear how Biden’s absence would affect the planned summit, the first time world leaders were due to gather at the Ramstein US airbase, normally the location of a regular meeting of defence ministers to discuss military aid for Kyiv.
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, promised that the Biden trip would be rescheduled and said he understood the president’s reasons for calling it off. “It would have been a very important meeting and we prepared it on all sides,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Germany had said the UK’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron would attend the event alongside Biden and Scholz. A total of 20 leaders were expected to attend.
They were to hear Zelenskyy unveil the latest version of his “victory plan” to end the war, which is expected to focus heavily on a demand to allow Ukraine to fire Storm Shadow and other western long-range missiles deep into Russia.
Biden has been resistant to allowing Ukraine to use the Anglo-French Storm Shadow, which relies on American technology, or US Atacms missiles. A special trip by Starmer to Washington last month failed to resolve the issue.
A German official said on Tuesday that the purpose of the Ramstein summit was to show long-term support for Ukraine, though concerns linger about how far that would endure if Donald Trump wins next month’s US presidential election.
“The message to Ukraine will be that our support is powerful and enduring, and to Moscow that there’s no use in speculating that we might waver in our support and that time will play for the Russian war of aggression,” the German official said prior to Biden’s withdrawal announcement.
Trump and many of his Republican allies have long been sceptical about the value of military aid for Ukraine. At the end of last month, Trump met Zelenskyy in New York and said after the meeting that he wanted to see a “fair deal made” to end the war, now heading towards its third winter.
The Republican nominee said he had learned a lot from their meeting. Prior to it commencing, Trump said: “I also have a very good relationship, as you know, with President Putin and I think if we win, we’re going to get it resolved very quickly,” he said.
Zelenskyy said the purpose of his trip to Ramstein was to present his plan to allied countries. “Once we fully understand the positions of our partners and assess all real possibilities for Ukraine, enhancing our victory plan, we will make our strategy for future actions public,” he said overnight on Monday.
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Then on Tuesday morning he indicated he would make a specific plea for allies to give his country more Patriot and other air defence systems, to better intercept Russian drone missile attacks.
“The obvious necessity for Ukraine is to strengthen our air defence everywhere it is needed, to make this Russian terror impossible,” Zelenskyy said in social media postings.
Two people were killed and five injured in Kharkiv on Tuesday afternoon after Russian glide bombs struck an apartment building in the Saltivka district. It was the second attack on the frontline city in a day; in the earlier attack, more than 20 people were reported injured.
Biden had planned to be in Germany from Thursday to Sunday, the first time he would have visited the country during his presidency. It was to have been followed by a trip to Angola to fulfil a promise he made to go to Africa while he led the US.
Both trips have now been postponed, the White House said, and its spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that there was little time remaining in Biden’s presidency to reschedule. “Three months is not a long time. As you know, that’s going to fly by. That’s going to fly by,” she said.