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Donald Trump's pressure on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia amounts to “modern-day appeasement,” Joe Biden said on Wednesday as Vladimir Putin welcomed China’s president and other leaders for his annual Victory Day military parade in Red Square.
Mr Biden told the BBC that his successor risked losing transatlantic confidence in the United States. “Europe’s leaders are asking: 'Can I rely on the United States? Are they going to be there?’” he said.
Of special concern was the White House proposal to let Russia keep some Ukrainian territory in an effort to strike a peace deal.
“It is modern-day appeasement,” Mr Biden said, referring to territorial concessions to Adolf Hitler by prime minister Neville Chamberlain that failed to prevent the Second World War.
He also said Mr Trump's treatment of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February was “beneath America.”
Mr Trump has long dismissed the war in Ukraine as a waste of lives and American taxpayers' money.
Kyiv and Washington last week signed an agreement granting American access to Ukraine's vast mineral resources - a return on investment, Mr Trump suggested, that could pave the way for more US aid. He has also said that Crimea, a strategic peninsula along the Black Sea in southern Ukraine that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, “will stay with Russia.”
Mr Biden’s comments came as attacks by Ukrainian long-range drones caused flight disruption at Moscow's main airports for a third consecutive day.
Aeroflot cancelled more than 100 flights to and from Moscow, while more than 140 flights were delayed as planes were repeatedly grounded, flight data suggested, amid heightened security measures around Friday’s 80th anniversary celebrations in Moscow marking victory over Nazi Germany in the Second World War - Russia's biggest secular holiday of the year.
Air traffic control restrictions across Russia affected at least 350 flights and disrupted at least 60,000 passengers, the Russian Tour Operators Association said.
Russian air defences repelled an attack by nine drones close to Moscow, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Foreign leaders attending the parade, including Chinese president Xi Jinping, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, were due to arrive on Wednesday.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said his country cannot provide security assurances over the Moscow events. Russia could stage provocations and later attempt to blame Ukraine, he said.
Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which border Russia and its Kaliningrad exclave, plan to close their airspace to the planes carrying Serbia's and Slovakia's leaders to Moscow later this week for the celebrations out of safety concerns, officials there said.
“Who could deny that in such a quite active cyber background ... that somebody will not use this as a possible provocation to create problems and risks for the flight of these people through the Republic of Lithuania,” Lithuanian president Gitanas Nauseda said.
Mr Xi's visit to Russia will be his third since the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24 2022. He last visited Moscow in March 2023 on a trip that offered an important political boost to Mr Putin just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader on charges of alleged involvement in abductions of thousands of children from Ukraine.
Mr Putin is expected to travel to China at the end of August and beginning of September.
Since Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has drawn closer to China as western countries have sought to isolate Mr Putin diplomatically. Russia has become increasingly dependent economically on China because of western sanctions.
Meanwhile, Russia launched a ballistic missile and a barrage of drones at Ukraine's capital before dawn on Wednesday, killing at least two people in apartment buildings, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian planes also dropped two glide bombs on a village in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, killing two women.
Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
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