Ramstein meeting on Ukraine postponed after Biden cancels trip

BERLIN (Reuters) – A summit meeting of Ukraine’s key allies in Ramstein, Germany has been postponed after U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled a scheduled overseas trip, the organisers said on Wednesday.

Biden cancelled trips to Germany and Angola on Tuesday in a blow to plans for the highest level meeting ever of the Ramstein group of Ukraine’s arms donors that aimed to underscore unwavering support for Kyiv against Russia’s invasion.

“The Oct. 12, 2024 event is postponed,” the U.S. public affairs office at Ramstein Air Base said in an email to journalists. “Announcements about future Ukraine Defence Contact Group meetings will be forthcoming.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda’s foreign policy adviser, Mieszko Pawlak, had earlier told Reuters that the meeting was not taking place and as such Duda would not travel to Germany. The U.S. had yet to announce a new date, Pawlak said.

The Ramstein group had been set to convene on the sidelines of Biden’s Oct. 10-13 state visit to Germany, which would have been the first U.S. state visit in nearly 40 years.

But the White House said Biden was postponing his trip to oversee preparations for Hurricane Milton and relief efforts after another hurricane last month killed more than 200 people.

“It was clear that Biden had to send the signal that he was taking care of domestic policy – so close to the (U.S.) elections,” said Stefan Mair, director of German foreign policy think tank SWP said. “I don’t see this (postponement) as downgrading the importance of Ukraine.”

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Washington gathered like-minded nations at the U.S. air base in Ramstein, southwestern Germany, establishing a group of some 50 countries whose defence ministers meet regularly to match Kyiv’s arms requests with pledges of donors.

Saturday’s meeting – the first at the level of government leaders – had been scheduled to open with public remarks by Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to a German official.

(Reporting by Barbara Erling, Andreas Rinke, Kirsti Knolle, Sabine Siebold writing by Alan Charlish; editing by Mark Heinrich)