First lady Jill Biden visits Ukraine in rare trip to war zone

UZHHOROD, Ukraine — First lady Jill Biden crossed the border into Ukraine on Sunday, traveling to an active war zone in a rare move for the spouse of a sitting president.Biden entered the country from Slovakia on Mother’s Day and met Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, who had not appeared in public since the Russian invasion began Feb. 24.“I wanted to come on Mother’s Day,” Biden said before the start of a closed-door meeting between the two first ladies. “I thought it was important to show the Ukrainian people that this war has to stop, and this war has been brutal, and that the people of the United States stand with the people of Ukraine.”Zelenska praised Biden “for a very courageous act” in coming to Ukraine.“We understand what it takes for the U.S. first lady to come here during a war when the military actions are taking place every day, where the air sirens are happening every day, even today,” she said in Ukrainian through an interpreter.The unannounced visit came amid a four-day swing through Eastern Europe for Biden — her highest-profile diplomatic engagement since President Biden took office and part of a broader effort to show continued U.S. support for Ukraine.For Jill Biden, a trip into Ukraine — stopping in a country that neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris visited during their recent trips to the region — enhanced the role she has carved out on the issue that has dominated and reshaped American foreign policy over the past three months.And she did it while focusing on her priorities: education, military families and mental health. Now, nearly 35 years later, she has been a central figure in the White House, acting as a key fundraiser, a campaign surrogate — and now as a high-profile emissary to a war-torn country.Biden has identified herself as a military mom, an educator and a defender of her husband, who often introduces himself not as the president of the United States but as: “Jill Biden’s husband.”The only first lady to have kept her professional career after her husband entered the White House — continuing to teach at a community college — has made clear that she has a second job, too, one that for now is attempting to showcase empathy and understanding in the most dire of circumstances.She has worn a mask decorated with a sunflower, the official flower of Ukraine, and during the State of the Union address she had the flower embroidered onto the right sleeve of her dress.“I talk to Joe every day about what’s going on in Ukraine,” she said in March, launching a campaign push for the midterms.