WASHINGTON (AP) — “We thought we could die.”
The Russian invasion had simply begun when Nancy Pelosi made a shock go to to Ukraine, the House speaker then the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to guide a congressional delegation to Kyiv.
Pelosi and the lawmakers had been ushered beneath the cloak of secrecy into the capital metropolis, an undisclosed passage that even to today she won’t expose.
“It was very, it was dangerous,” Pelosi informed The Associated Press earlier than Sunday’s one-year anniversary of that journey.
“We never feared about it, but we thought we could die because we’re visiting a serious, serious war zone,” Pelosi mentioned. “We had great protection, but nonetheless, a war — theater of war.”
Pelosi’s go to was as uncommon because it was historic, opening a contemporary diplomatic channel between the U.S. and Ukraine that has solely deepened with the extended struggle. In the 12 months since, an extended checklist of congressional leaders, senators and chairs of highly effective committees, each Democrats and Republicans, adopted her lead, punctuated by President Joe Biden’s personal go to this 12 months.
The regular stream of arrivals in Kyiv has served to amplify a political and navy partnership between the U.S. and Ukraine for the world to see, one which might be examined anew when Congress is once more anticipated this 12 months to assist fund the struggle to defeat Russia.
“We must win. We must bring this to a positive conclusion — for the people of Ukraine and for our country,” Pelosi mentioned.
“There is a fight in the world now between democracy and autocracy, its manifestation at the time is in Ukraine.”
With a brand new Republican majority within the House whose Trump-aligned members have balked at abroad investments, Pelosi, a Democrat, stays assured the Congress will proceed backing Ukraine as a part of a broader U.S. dedication to democracy overseas within the face of authoritarian aggression.
“Support for Ukraine has been bipartisan and bicameral, in both houses of Congress by both parties, and the American people support democracy in Ukraine,” Pelosi informed AP. “I believe that we will continue to support as long as we need to support democracy … as long as it takes to win.”
Now the speaker emerita, an honorary title bestowed by Democrats, Pelosi is circumspect about her function as a U.S. emissary overseas. Having visited 87 international locations throughout her time in workplace, many because the trailblazing first girl to be the House speaker, she set a brand new commonplace for pointing the gavel outward as she targeted consideration on the world past U.S. shores.
In her workplace tucked away on the Capitol, Pelosi shared most of the honors and mementos she has obtained from overseas, together with the honorary passport she was given on her journey to Ukraine, amongst her last stops as speaker.
The former House Speaker moved into a brand new workplace and together with her introduced the honors she’s obtained from dignitaries all through her years of public service.
It’s a signature political fashion, constructing on Pelosi’s a long time of labor on the House Intelligence Committee, however one {that a} new era of House leaders could — or could not — selected to emulate.
The new Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library this month, the Republican chief’s first foray as chief into international affairs.
Democrat Hakeem Jeffries took his personal first journey overseas as House minority chief, main congressional delegations final week to Ghana and Israel.
Pelosi mentioned it’s as much as the brand new leaders what they may do on the worldwide stage.
“Other speakers have understood our national security — we take an oath to protect and defend — and so we have to reach out with our values and our strength to make sure that happens,” she mentioned.
“I just want to say that this, for me, was the most logical thing to do,” Pelosi mentioned.
When Pelosi arrived in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood outdoors to satisfy the U.S. officers, a photograph that ricocheted world wide as a present of help for the younger democracy combating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
“The courage of the president in greeting us on the street rather than us just meeting him in his office was yet again another symbol of the courage of the people of Ukraine,” she mentioned.
Pelosi informed Zelenskyy in a video launched on the time “your fight is a fight for everyone.”
A 12 months on, with no finish to the struggle in sight, Pelosi mentioned: “I would have hoped that it would have been over by now.”
Pelosi’s journey overseas has not been with out political challenges, and controversy. During the Trump period she acted as a substitute emissary abroad, reassuring allies that the U.S. remained a associate regardless of the Republican president’s “America First” neo-isolationist method to international coverage.
Last 12 months, in one in all her last journeys as speaker, Pelosi touched down with a delegation in Taipei, crowds lining the streets to cheer her arrival, a go to with the Taiwanese president that drew a pointy rebuke from Beijing, which counts the island as its personal.
“Cowardly,” she mentioned concerning the navy workout routines China launched within the aftermath of her journey.
Pelosi supplied uncommon reward for McCarthy’s personal assembly with Tsai, notably its bipartisan nature and the selection of venue, the historic Reagan library.
“That was really quite a message and quite an optic to be there. And so I salute what he did,” she mentioned.
In one in all her closing acts as House speaker in December, Pelosi hosted Zelenskyy for a joint handle to Congress. The go to evoked the one made by Winston Churchill, the prime minister of Britain, at Christmastime in 1941 to talk to Congress within the Senate chamber of a “long and hard war” throughout World War II.
Zelenskyy introduced to Congress a Ukrainian flag signed by front-line troops that Pelosi mentioned will ultimately be displayed on the U.S. Capitol.
The world has modified a lot since Pelosi joined Congress — one in all her first journeys overseas was in 1991, when she dared to unfurl a pro-democracy banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square shortly after the scholar demonstrations that resulted in a bloodbath.
After the lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s once more Russia and China that stay entrance of her thoughts.
“The role of Putin in terms of Russia that is a bigger threat than it was when I came to Congress,” she mentioned. A decade after the Berlin Wall got here down in 1989, she mentioned, Putin went up.
“That’s where the fight for democracy is taking place,” she mentioned.
And, she mentioned, regardless of the work she and others in Congress have carried out to level out the considerations over China’s navy and financial rise, and its human rights document, “that has only gotten worse.”
Often talked about as somebody who may develop into an precise ambassador — there have been musings that Biden may nominate her to Rome or past — Pelosi mentioned she is concentrated on her two-year time period in workplace, not the House speaker however the consultant from San Francisco.
“Right now my plan is to serve my constituents,” Pelosi mentioned. “I like having 750,000 bosses, rather than one.”
