US Vice President Kamala Harris departed for Poland on Wednesday under a cloud of uncertainty over a Western plan to provide Ukraine fighter jets, APA reports citing CNN.
Harris did not address reporters before she boarded her plane. Air Force Two left Washington just before 8 a.m. ET en route to Warsaw, where Harris plans to meet the country’s leadership on Thursday in an effort to rally international support and reassure one of NATO’s easternmost allies.
But her mission is complicated by the issue over Soviet-era jets, which Ukraine is requesting to sustain its fight against Russia. Poland’s proposal to first transfer ownership of MiG-29 aircraft to the United States caught Biden administration officials completely off-guard and was rejected by the Pentagon.
Harris will discuss the thorny issue this week, senior administration officials said ahead of her departure.
“A number of people have had a variety of ideas and we think all of them are worth discussing and that's what we're going to continue doing,” one official said.
In Warsaw, Harris will also meet with refugees who have fled violence in Ukraine, as well as American diplomats who relocated to Poland from the US Embassy in Kyiv.
She’ll travel onward to Romania, which has seen an influx of migrants fleeing violence in Ukraine.
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