Blue and yellow Ukrainian flags fly along US flags on Pennsylvania Avenue as Zelensky approaches the first event of her US visit, a meeting with Secretary of State Blinken.
Secretary of State Ned Price said the US Secretary of State guaranteed President Volodymyr Zelensky's wife the US commitment to Ukraine. Foreign Minister Blinken also praised the efforts of the Ukrainian presidential wife in supporting civilians who suffered casualties and other losses in the conflict.
The first lady of Ukraine also met with the head of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Samantha Power on July 18. USAID has spent billions of dollars to support the Ukrainian government and humanitarian needs, while making efforts to ease the worsening global food shortage caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The US State Department announced and later canceled a press conference between Secretary of State Blinken and First Lady of Ukraine Zelenska. According to AP, Zelenska's widely publicized visit reflects that she did not travel to the US as an official representative of her husband, President Volodymyr Zelensky,'s government.
Zelensky majored in Architecture at university but worked as a comedy scriptwriter, including a comedy script for Zelensky, a prominent comedian before being elected president of Ukraine in 2019.
When the Ukrainian conflict broke out, Zelenska and her two children were basically absent from the first months of the war. In an interview with Time magazine in July, she said that the war forced her to leave her husband for security reasons. The children of the Ukrainian president and his wife, like other Ukrainians, mostly follow Volodymyr Zelensky through the night-time videos he releases.
Zelenska appeared on May 8 to welcome First Lady Jill Biden on a surprise visit to western Ukraine.
Since the meeting between the two First Ladies of the US - Ukraine, Zelenska has been more public, including answering interviews with the press about the situation in Ukraine and about the projects to support people in the conflict that she promoted.
Ukrainian President Zelensky's wife will meet Jill Biden at the White House on July 19 and will speak to US lawmakers at the Capitol Palace on July 20.
