As President Joe Biden traveled to Poland, the United States and European Union (EU) announced a new partnership aimed at reducing Europe’s reliance on Russian energy. Under the partnership, announced Friday, the U.S. and other nations will increase liquified natural gas exports to Europe by 15 billion cubic meters this year. Even larger shipments would be delivered in the future. According to Biden, the EU will also “work to ensure additional EU market demand for 50 billion cubic meters of LNG from the United States annually by 2030.”
“Putin has issued Russia’s energy resources to coerce and manipulate its neighbors. That’s how he’s used it. He’s used the profits to drive his war machine,” President Biden said at a joint news conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Friday.
“We want, as Europeans, to diversify away from Russia, towards suppliers that we trust, that are friends, and that are reliable,” von Der Leyen added.
Just hours after that news conference in Brussels, Biden was in Rzeszow, Poland, meeting with members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division that have been serving in Poland since before the invasion began. Biden was then was welcomed by Polish President Andrzej Duda and briefed on the massive humanitarian effort to help Ukrainian refugees currently staying in Poland. Out of the 3.5 million Ukrainians who have fled the country, more than 2.2 million have entered Poland and many propose to stay there.
The Poland trip, as well as the EU energy partnership, should give Biden the chance to shore things up with an important NATO ally. In addition to hosting U.S. troops and taking in millions of refugees, Poland has at times been less than 20 miles away from the fighting in Ukraine.
Biden’s trip came the same day Ukrainian authorities announced about 300 people were killed in Russia’s attack on a theater in Mariupol last week, making it the deadliest known attack on civilians since the invasion began.
“We all have a very deeply human response to what happened,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said aboard Air Force One Friday. “Just absolute shock and horror, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target that the Russians were striking and that they did so with such brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people.”
The attack, which has been widely condemned, was cited as an example of war crimes Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused Russia of committing earlier this week.
