Biden has 'no plans' to visit Ukraine during trip to Europe, Psaki says

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Sunday that President Biden has "no plans" to visit Ukraine during his trip to Europe this week.

It would likely be difficult for Ukraine to guarantee Biden's safety no matter where he went in the country. Western Ukraine remained safe for the first several weeks of the Russian invasion, but Russian forces have recently begun launching strikes in that part of the country, including a cruise missile attack on an aircraft repair plant in Lviv and a hypersonic missile strike targeting what the Russian Defense Ministry described as "a large underground warehouse containing missiles and aviation ammunition in the ... Ivano-Frankivsk region."

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield seemed to confirm Psaki's statement on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday.

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"Three European heads of state visited Kyiv in the last week or so, [and] former Ukrain[ian] President Petro Poroshenko suggested that President Biden should visit Ukraine during his trip to Europe this week. Is that on the table?" host Jake Tapper asked Thomas-Greenfield.

(Tapper's first statement was not quite correct. According to The Washington Post, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa all visited Kyiv last week, but they are their countries' heads of government, not heads of state).

"As far as I know, that's not on the table," Thomas-Greenfield responded.

During a Sunday appearance on CBS' Face the Nation, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Biden should get as close to Ukraine as he can.

"[W]hat I'd like to see the president do is to reassure our Eastern Bloc allies. It's fine to go to Brussels. It's fine to go to Berlin, and I'd like to see him go to Romania or Poland or to the Baltics. They're right on the front lines and need to know that we're in this fight with them to win," McConnell said.