Biden To Meet With Erdogan, Zelenskyy at NATO Summit

President Joe Biden plans to sit down with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week at an upcoming summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Two sources informed Politico that Biden will meet with both leaders one-on-one in separate meetings at this year’s conference for North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member and observer states.

According to the sources, Biden’s first meeting with Erdoğan is scheduled for Tuesday and will revolve around closing the deal on Turkey’s pledge to support Swedish acceptance into the United States-led alliance.

Turkey has notably been hesitant to move forward with Sweden’s official participation, citing concerns over the country being too sympathetic to Kurdish rebels that Ankara considers terrorists.

However, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced Monday afternoon that Turkey had agreed to support Sweden’s full participation in NATO in exchange for a new “special coordinator for counterterrorism.”

Biden will then likely speak with Zelenskyy on Wednesday, although the date is not finalized, the sources said. That meeting will center around Kyiv’s bid to join the union and the West’s hesitancy to do it immediately.

The sources claimed that Biden will attempt to offer Zelenskyy the removal of some bureaucratic hurdles and a hefty amount of security assistance for him to table the push toward immediate Ukrainian membership.

On Monday, Biden talked with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and King Charles III about some of that proposed military assistance, which Sunak opposes, NBC News reported.

A preliminary reveal by the Department of Defense over the weekend detailed that the U.S. would give Ukraine cluster munitions in a new package totaling $800 million.