U.S. First Lady Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia this week to meet with Ukrainian refugee families, U.S. aid and military workers and embassy workers, her office said Monday.
Romania and Slovakia have taken in hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion of their country.
This trip by Ms. Biden, scheduled for May 5-9, is the latest in US demonstrations of support for Ukraine and the countries that help it.
It comes after a surprise visit to Ukraine by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who last Saturday met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ms Biden will meet with American soldiers in Romania on Friday before traveling to Bucharest on Saturday where she will meet with members of the government as well as the American embassy and with teachers working with Ukrainian refugee children, according to a press release from her office.
In Slovakia on Sunday, Mother’s Day in the United States, Ms Biden will travel to the city of Kosice and the village of Vysne Nemecke to meet with refugees, aid workers and Slovaks providing aid.
“For Mother’s Day, she will meet Ukrainian mothers and children who were forced to flee their homeland because of Putin’s war,” according to Ms. Biden’s office.
She will also travel to Bratislava where she will meet government officials and US embassy staff.
More than 5.4 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, according to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Women and children represent 90% of these refugees.
Some three million Ukrainian refugees have fled to Poland, which hosts by far the largest number. Romania received more than 810,000 and Slovakia some 370,000.
US President Joe Biden asked Congress last Thursday for a colossal budget extension of 33 billion dollars mainly to deliver more military aid to Kyiv.