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US First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will be on another overseas engagement this month as she is set to meet with Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia and Romania. Dr. Biden will also be meeting with US service members stationed in both countries.
The White House announced over the weekend that Dr. Biden would be traveling to Slovakia and Romania to meet with US service members and Ukrainian refugees who fled to safety. Dr. Biden will be traveling on May 5 for a four-day visit to the region. Aside from refugees and service members, Dr. Biden will also meet with US embassy personnel as well as humanitarian workers along with Romanian and Slovakian officials.
This will mark the first lady’s second solo trip overseas, following her attendance at the Japan Olympics last year. Dr. Biden’s upcoming trip also follows other Biden administration officials who have traveled to the region in recent weeks to show support for Ukraine and US allies in the ongoing war.
Dr. Biden will visit Romania first, then Slovakia. In her visit to Romania, the first lady will meet with US troops at the Mikhail Kogalniceanu Airbase. Dr. Biden will then meet with Romanian officials and embassy staff in the capital Bucharest, as well as humanitarian workers and educators working with Ukrainian teens who have been displaced due to the conflict.
During her visit to Slovakia, Dr. Biden will also meet with refugees and the locals assisting the refugees in Kosice and Vysne Nemecke. According to the White House, Dr. Biden will be meeting with Ukrainian mothers and children on May 8 to mark Mother’s Day.
In other related news, a book by New York Times journalists Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns revealed that Dr. Biden was initially against the idea of her husband choosing Kamala Harris as his running mate. This was due to Harris’s harsh attack on Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate.
“There are millions of people in the United States,” said the now-first lady according to the book. “‘Why?’ she asked, ‘do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?’”
At the time, the Biden family saw Harris’s attack on Biden as a “smear and a betrayal,” with the book noting that Harris attacked Biden more harshly compared to her other fellow Democratic candidates.
