BERLIN: US President Joe Biden said on Friday that there was no consensus for giving Ukraine long-range weapons that President Volodymyr Zel­ensky has been requesting Western nations for months to conduct deeper strikes into Russia.

“Right now, there’s no consensus for long-range weapons,” Biden told reporters in Berlin . At the same time, he urged the West to sustain its support for Ukraine as Kyiv faces a bleak winter and a looming US presidential election raises worries about the strength of Washington’s own resolve.

Biden was speaking to reporters before holding closed-door talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during a one-day trip to Berlin to discuss matters ranging from Ukraine to the expanding conflict in the Middle East.

“As Ukraine faces a tough winter, we must, we must sustain our resolve,” Biden said in a statement. “And I know the cost is heavy, but make no mistake, it bears in comparison to the cost of living in a world where aggression prevails, where large states attack and bully smaller ones simply because they can.”

He said he would discuss with Scholz efforts to increase military support for Ukraine and shore up its civilian energy infrastructure “by unlocking the value of frozen Russian assets”. They would also discuss the Gaza conflict.

Biden’s trip comes just 18 days before the US presidential vote, in which Donald Trump is seeking re-election in a close race against Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump has signalled he would be more reluctant than Biden to continue to support Ukraine.

Earlier on Friday, Ger­many’s President Frank-Wal­ter Steinmeier refer­red to previously strained Euro­pean-US ties under Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency during a ceremony to award Biden Germany’s highest order of merit.

“Just a handful of years ago, the distance had grown so wide that we almost lost each other,” he said of Europe and the United States. “When you were elected president, you restored Europe’s hope in the transatlantic alliance literally overnight.”

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2024