US President Barack Obama landed in Poland Tuesday to open a European tour dominated by the showdown with Russia over Ukraine.
Obama touched down at Warsaw airport on a trip which also includes stops in Belgium for the G7 summit and France for talks with President Francois Hollande and the 70th anniversary commemorations of the D-Day Normandy landings.
The president was first due to inspect a detachment of US and Polish pilots flying NATO F-16 missions over Poland that were stepped up amid regional security jitters after Russia's annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea peninsula.
Then he was to head into downtown Warsaw for talks with President Bronislaw Komorowski, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and a group of NATO leaders from central and eastern Europe.
The US leader was also to be the guest of honor at 25th anniversary celebrations of Poland's first partly free post-Communist elections, which have taken on increased significance amid the worst East-West showdown since the end of the Cold War.
He will also use an overnight stay in Warsaw to meet Ukraine's president-elect Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday, in a sign of support for the newly elected leader's bid to tilt the country West after his solid election win.
Obama's tour later takes in the Group of Seven summit in Brussels, which will be dominated by a US push to sometimes reluctant Europe to maintain the economic pressure on Russia.
In Normandy, Obama will come face-to-face with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a potentially prickly encounter, given that the US leader has spent months trying to isolate his rival and punish the Kremlin inner circle with sanctions over Ukraine.
The White House says there will be no one-on-one meeting between Obama and Putin on the sidelines of several events featuring heads of states and leaders attending the World War II commemoration.
But senior aides have not ruled out an informal encounter -- which would be the first for the rivals since the Ukraine crisis erupted.
At his meeting with eastern European leaders, Obama will be expected to reassert his promise to eastern European allies left skittish by Russia's pressure on Ukraine, that Washington is firmly committed to Article Five of the NATO charter, which holds that an attack on one member state is an attack on all.
The meeting, at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, will include leaders or senior representatives from former Eastern bloc states including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia.
Short link: