The meeting between President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House next Thursday will be an opportunity to "align strategic goals" for the remainder of Biden's administration – says the National Security Council's Michael Carpenter. Zelenskyy is expected to present Ukraine's "victory plan" directly to Biden. VOA's Iuliia Iarmolenko asked Ambassador Carpenter what President Biden is prepared to do to ensure Zelenskyy's plan is successful.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
VOA: President Zelenskyy is coming to New York and Washington and is set to present Ukraine's "victory plan." Has President Biden been briefed on the details of this plan, or maybe members of the administration? And should Ukraine expect full support for this plan from the White House?
Michael Carpenter, senior director for Europe, National Security Council: We're in constant communication with our Ukrainian partners on all range of issues. However, with this particular conversation, I understand that President Zelenskyy wanted to come here and brief this plan directly to President Biden. So no, we are not familiar with it, but the presidents will have a chance to have that conversation soon and also to align their strategic goals for the remainder of this administration, which is going to be very important.
VOA: But should Ukraine expect full support of this plan from the administration?
Carpenter: I don't know what's in the plan, so I can't tell you how the reaction will be. But, of course, President Biden is absolutely determined to support Ukraine and to put it in the strongest possible position at the end of his term in office. And he has directed all of us who work for him to move heaven and earth to ensure that we are providing all of the … especially the military assistance, but also some of the near-term energy security assistance that we have pledged. And that has been part of the supplemental bill that was passed in April to get that out the door as fast as we possibly can. That is his instruction to us, and we are executing on that as we speak.
VOA: And recently, the administration sent their strategy on Ukraine to the Congress. Is there any correlation or coordination between the Ukrainian victory plan and the administration's strategy on Ukraine?
Carpenter: Well, again, we're eagerly anticipating President Zelenskyy's presentation of his strategic vision for victory. And, you know, when that happens, I'm sure the president will be very interested in all the various details and how they fit together. The military, the economic, the diplomatic. All of that is important. And so I think it's going to be a very interesting and substantive conversation when they meet.
VOA: We can expect that strikes inside Russia using American long-range systems will be a topic of discussion when President Biden and President Zelenskyy meet at the White House? Are there any movements towards lifting the restriction?
Carpenter: I don't have any announcements to make for you. What I will say is that we have a number of efforts underway to give Ukraine an advantage in terms of how they are able to prosecute targets from which Russia is firing at Ukrainian positions and Ukrainian cities and inflicting damage on Ukrainian infrastructure. And so we will continue that conversation. Obviously, some of that we can talk about in public, but other elements of it are best left in private.
VOA: But there are some active discussions of the topic …
Carpenter: There are very active discussions on this. And in fact, we judge that Ukraine needs to have long-range capabilities that it can employ. In fact, Ukraine does have some indigenous long-range capabilities of its own that it has used highly effectively. I would remind you that there was a strike that the Ukrainian armed forces carried out recently near the Russian-Belarusian border that was very successful. And so we will be having the broad conversation on all the range of capabilities that we think are most important for Ukraine right now, to put it in a position of strength. And again, this is President Biden's top priority. He is committed to this. And I'm sure we're going to have a good conversation.
VOA: President Zelenskyy said that for a "victory plan" to work, it requires fast decisions from partners, namely the United States. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan recently said that President Biden will use these four months left in his presidency to put Ukraine in the position to win the war. So should we expect fast bold decisive actions in the next months?
Carpenter: Yeah, I think you will see that we will undertake a number of initiatives both in the coming week and in the coming months to put Ukraine in a stronger position, bearing in mind that we have already spent a lot of the money from the supplemental bill that was passed in April. So there are not a lot of funds left, but we will try to prioritize the most important capabilities to give Ukraine strength on the battlefield.
VOA: Does President Biden want to see Ukraine's victory as a part of his legacy?
Carpenter: Absolutely. The president is committed to Ukraine as a sovereign, democratic, independent state and pushing back on this vicious attack from Russia. As we've noted many times, Putin could end this war today if he wanted to. And nobody wants peace and stability and security more than the Ukrainian people. They are the victims here. They are the ones whose towns, whose villages, whose neighbor's houses have been bombed out, whose schools and kindergartens. I mean, we've seen the most atrocious war crimes, even crimes against humanity have been found to have been perpetrated inside Ukraine. So we understand that Ukrainians want peace above all else, but we need to give them the strength to be able to achieve that. And that is where we plan to have a very substantive discussion, how to align our policies to achieve that end goal.
VOA: World leaders are gathering in New York for a United Nations General Assembly. Will President Biden use the UNGA platform to push for more support for Ukraine in this critical time?
Carpenter: I think you can expect that Ukraine will feature in the president's speech to the General Assembly. And I can assure you that in most of the conversations with our partners and allies from around the world, this will be one of the top topics of conversation.
