Biden cancels trip to meet pope and Zelensky as fires rage in California

US president Joe Biden has cancelled the final overseas trip of his presidency just hours before he was set to depart for Rome and the Vatican, choosing to remain in Washington to monitor the response to devastating fires raging in California.

Mr Biden was scheduled to leave on Thursday afternoon, after giving the eulogy for former president Jimmy Carter at a memorial service in Washington, for the three-day trip to meet with Pope Francis and Italian president Sergio Mattarella and prime minister Giorgia Meloni as well as a final face-to-face meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The trip was meant as a coda to the second Catholic US president’s time in the White House and a final opportunity to showcase the strength of American alliances before he leaves office on January 20.

And the sit-down with Mr Zelensky would have offered the two leaders one last chance to discuss the path ahead for Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes office amid growing uncertainty about future American support for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion.

The White House had not formally announced the Biden-Zelensky meeting. But the two sides had agreed that the leaders would meet in Rome on Friday, according to a US official who was not authorised to comment publicly on the White House plan.

The Biden administration has provided Ukraine with more than 65 billion US dollars (£53 billion) in military assistance since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, including 500 million dollars (£407 million) in weaponry that the administration was expected to announce on Thursday.

There was now less than four billion dollars (£3 billion) remaining in congressionally authorised funding for Ukraine, and much of that was expected to roll over to the Trump administration to determine whether to continue the weapons support.

Mr Trump, whose warm relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin over the years has been heavily scrutinised and who has baulked at the cost of aid to Kyiv, added a new layer of doubt about future American support earlier this week when he appeared to sympathise with Mr Putin’s position that Ukraine should not be part of Nato.

The president-elect also criticised the Biden administration for expressing support for Kyiv’s eventual membership in the transatlantic military alliance.

Nato members at the July summit in Washington declared that Ukraine’s path to the alliance was “irreversible”.

But most members, including the US, have said Kyiv cannot join while at war and declined to put a timeline on membership.

“A big part of the problem is, Russia — for many, many years, long before Putin — said, ‘You could never have Nato involved with Ukraine’.
Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone,” Mr Trump told reporters on Tuesday.

“And somewhere along the line, Biden said, ‘No. They should be able to join Nato’. Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”

The announcement of the trip’s cancellation came just hours after Mr Biden departed Los Angeles after meeting his first great-grandchild, who was born on Wednesday at a hospital in the area.

He received a briefing from local fire officials before returning to Washington, as smoke and ash from blazes raging in the area clouded the daytime sky.

“After returning this evening from Los Angeles, where earlier today he had met with police, fire and emergency personnel fighting the historic fires raging in the area and approved a major disaster declaration for California, President Biden made the decision to cancel his upcoming trip to Italy to remain focused on directing the full federal response in the days ahead,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The large Palisades fire broke out on Tuesday morning as Mr Biden was in Los Angeles, and the high winds that helped fuel its massive spread forced the president to scrap a planned visit to Thermal to announce two new national monuments.

While flying back to Washington on Wednesday, Mr Biden approved a federal major disaster declaration for Los Angeles County, allowing for federal funding to be made available for temporary housing and home repairs as well as low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses.

It also provides additional financial assistance to state and local governments to cover the costs of fighting and cleaning up after the fires.