Ukraine’s leader to talk with Biden on security, Russian gas

By YURAS KARMANAU
Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s president is traveling to the United States in hopes of bolstering security ties with Washington and persuading the administration to ramp up sanctions against a new Russian gas pipeline bypassing his country. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called the U.S. failure to block the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany a grave political error. He is expected to again raise the issue during his talks Wednesday with U.S. President Joe Biden. Zelenskyy has described the new pipeline as a powerful geopolitical weapon for Russia, which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and backed a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine wants the U.S. to impose tougher sanctions on the Russian gas pipeline.