A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced Saturday that it will be heading to Europe next week to demonstrate solidarity with the U.S’s NATO allies and to visit with Ukrainian refugees seeking shelter across the border in Poland.
The delegation will be led by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and will include seven other House members as well as Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.).
According to a release from Hoyer’s office, the visit will begin in Berlin, where the lawmakers will meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other senior officials.
They will then travel to Copenhagen, Denmark, where they will discuss the latest developments in the war in Ukraine with Danish officials. During their visit, they will lay a wreath at the memorial to Danes who died fighting with Allied forces in the Second World War. In Copenhagen, Hoyer will deliver remarks to the Danish Foreign Policy Society at Christiansborg Palace, the release added.
The delegation will then head to Warsaw, Poland, where they will meet with senior Polish government officials and Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.
While in Poland, they will travel to Rzeszow, near the Poland-Ukraine border, where they will sit down with aid workers to discuss ways the United States can continue to provide assistance to those fleeing the war in Ukraine, and they will meet directly with Ukrainian refugees, according to the release.
The lawmakers will also meet with U.S. troops and commanders from the 82nd Airborne Division and with staff from the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv who are now operating from Poland.
On the return leg of their journey from Europe, the delegation will stop in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, to make a visit to a receding glacier that will focus on the global climate crisis.
“[Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked, unjust, and illegal invasion of Ukraine has only made our transatlantic alliance stronger, and our delegation will be meeting with leaders from our NATO-allied nations to show America’s engagement and solidarity as well as to thank them for standing strong in the face of Russian aggression,” Hoyer said in a statement.
The delegation also includes Reps. Donald Norcross (D-N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), Garret Graves (R-La.), Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas). The lawmakers will return to Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 15.
“This delegation is a demonstration our commitment to our Allies and partners in Europe. I look forward to hearing from the Ukrainians who have fled Putin’s terror and learning how we can help those who remain in Ukraine,” Norcross said in a statement.
This visit comes after President Biden confirmed Friday that Slovakia, a NATO member state, transferred a Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine and said that the U.S. would reposition an American Patriot missile system to Slovakia in return.