President Biden met with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki after his stealth trip out of Ukraine and his Kyiv meeting with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Biden’s Eastern Europe trip took as its theme the resilience of Ukraine — and by extension the nation’s Western allies — in its year-old war against Russia.
Biden spoke glowingly about the success of the allied effort, castigating Russian president Vladimir Putin as being “plain wrong” in his presumption that Western democracies would crater under Russian military pressure.
The war in Ukraine is nothing less than a fight for democracy, as Biden frames it, writing that the “democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker.” In a tweet, Biden tapped the theme of resilience, writing: “Democracies of the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow, and forever.”
Over the past year, the United States has come together with our Allies and partners in an extraordinary coalition to preserve freedom. And we will remain unified. pic.twitter.com/VxKAK1KAXa
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 22, 2023
In Poland, Biden also celebrated a victory for American business and technology, with the White House announcing a big nuclear deal with Poland just after the Morawiecki meeting. The White House revealed that the U.S.-based Westinghouse conglomerate had been selected by Poland to “provide the technology for its first three nuclear reactors, cementing a long-term strategic energy partnership between Poland and the United States.”
Westinghouse boasts that nuclear energy currently provides 55% of the U.S.’s and 14% of the world’s carbon-free energy. The contract with state-owned Polish utility Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) “covers front-end engineering, early procurement work and program development.”
Westinghouse says it has “already signed agreements with 35 companies in Poland and 75 throughout the region.” The Westinghouse AP1000 technology — “the most advanced Generation III+ nuclear reactor available today” — also has been selected for nine units in Ukraine.
