With Biden Absent, Meeting of Western Leaders on Ukraine Is Postponed

A meeting of Western leaders supporting Ukraine’s war effort against Russia has been postponed after President Biden canceled his participation to deal with the impact in Florida of Hurricane Milton, an American military spokesman at the base where the meeting was to be held said on Wednesday.

The meeting on Saturday, at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, was intended to give President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine high-level encouragement and further support, and also demonstrate President Biden’s strong backing for Ukraine and its Western aspirations a month before Americans choose his successor.

The postponement, confirmed in an email to reporters by the 86th Airlift Wing at Ramstein, is a setback to Mr. Zelensky’s efforts to further rally military support for Ukraine as his forces slowly but surely lose ground to Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.

This meeting at the American military hub, of what is formally known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, was of particular importance because it was the first one to feature Western heads of state.

The meeting may be rescheduled to coincide with a gathering of NATO defense ministers in Brussels Oct. 17-18. That meeting may be at the ministerial level, in keeping with the normal pattern, and not include national leaders, officials suggest.

But the United States is the chair of the Ramstein group, which consists of up to 50 countries, so deciding when to hold the next meeting will be up to Washington, but no announcement has been made yet.

Mr. Biden was also supposed to meet the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in Berlin to discuss Ukraine and other matters. Whether that meeting will go on without Mr. Biden isnot yet clear.