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The president celebrated his defense of Ukraine and restoration of global alliances but warned that a world filled with crises looms outside.
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E. Sanger
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, a Washington correspondent, is traveling with President Biden in New York. David E. Sanger has covered national security issues for the Times for four decades.
- Sept. 24, 2024Updated 12:06 p.m. ET
President Biden used his final speech to the United Nations to celebrate his defense of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and his work to restore America’s global alliances, but he also warned that the advances of his administration could easily fall apart if America returns to isolationism.
In an address of a little more than 20 minutes to the U.N’s General Assembly, Mr. Biden ticked through the high points of his nearly four years in office, citing a list of challenges he faced and the responses he organized. But he stopped short of assessing how he did in what he has described as the central challenge of his time: ensuring that democracy wins out over autocracy.
Not surprisingly, Mr. Biden focused heavily on America and the West’s response to the Ukraine invasion, declaring that the United States an its allies, chiefly NATO, had “ensured the survival of Ukraine as a free nation.” But he also acknowledged that Ukraine’s power to hold off Russia could be fleeting.
“We cannot grow weary, we cannot look away,” he declared, in what may be his last opportunity to rally global support behind a conflict that has played a central role in his presidency.
On Thursday, Mr. Biden will meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and will come under new pressure to let Ukraine use American long-range missiles to strike deep into Russian territory — a step he has resisted, fearing it would put the United States into direct conflict with one of its two major nuclear-armed adversaries.
While Mr. Zelensky will soon speak to the General Assembly, Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, will not; Russia is being represented by its longtime foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. Nor is China’s president, Xi Jinping, coming to the annual event, meaning that the two other major powers confronting the United States during Mr. Biden’s presidency will be barely heard.
