Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet with US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris today, as the war in Ukraine has once again been at the center of the US election campaign due to Donald Trump’s sharp criticism of the Ukrainian president.

Zelensky will meet in the afternoon with Biden and Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, a day after Washington announced an additional $375 million in military aid to Ukraine.

And the US does not intend to stop there.

The American president, in a brief conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart yesterday, Wednesday, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, promised him to increase the flow of American aid to “help Ukraine win.”

Details of this assistance will be announced later today.

For his part, Zelensky will present the “victory plan” he has drawn up with the aim of ending the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian president’s aim is to find Kiev in a position of strength before any peace negotiations begin.

Zelensky has once again asked the West to allow the Ukrainian military to strike targets deep inside Russian territory with the weapons they provide, something the US – Ukraine’s main supporter – has so far refused to listen to.

The Ukrainian president is well aware that support for his country is largely up in the air in the run-up to the US presidential election.

According to the polls, Kamala Harris – who has pledged to continue helping Kiev, if elected – and Donald Trump are in a neck-and-neck battle.

Biden promised today to present “a series of measures to strengthen support for the Ukrainian armed forces”, but the Republican candidate – and his predecessor in the presidency – has been strongly critical of Zelensky in recent days.

Although the possibility of Trump meeting with Zelensky had been mentioned, this now seems to be ruled out, according to the American press.

The Ukrainian president will also go to the Capitol to meet with high-ranking parliamentarians, mainly in the Senate.

But he will not hold talks with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, who said he would invoke obstruction.

Johnson is among Republicans who sharply criticized Zelensky’s visit Sunday to a Pennsylvania munitions plant, where he appeared with state Gov. John Shapiro — who is actively supporting the Harris candidacy — Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Matt Cartwright, all Democrats.

Pennsylvania is one of the swing states that will decide the outcome of the presidential election, and Mike Johnson accused the Ukrainian leader’s team of organizing a “pre-election event” in favor of the Democrats with this visit.

“The plant is in a politically ambiguous state, the visit was organized by a political ally of Kamala Harris and did not include a single Republican — on purpose — no Republicans were invited,” Johnson wrote.

“The visit was clearly a partisan pre-election event aimed at helping the Democrats and is clear interference in the election,” he complained, while asking Zelensky to “immediately expel” the Ukrainian ambassador to Washington, without explaining the reasons.

“These cities are lost, they are lost, and we continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal, Zelensky,” Trump complained yesterday, Wednesday, during a campaign rally.

“There is no deal that he could have signed that would be worse than the situation we have now,” the Republican continued, stressing that “we have a country that has been wiped out, it cannot be rebuilt.”

“Every time he comes to our country, he leaves with $60 billion, I think he’s the best businessman on the planet,” he quipped from North Carolina.

Already the Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee has announced it will look into whether Zelenskiy’s visit was an attempt to use a leader to promote Harris’ campaign.

EM