Biden to Meet With Zelensky as Ukraine Seeks Revival on Battlefield

President Biden plans to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday at a critical juncture in the war with Russia as the two allies seek ways to reverse the momentum on the battlefield.

The two presidents are to sit down in Paris where they are participating in ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that helped turn the tide against Nazi Germany in World War II. Mr. Biden will travel later in the day back to Normandy to deliver a speech honoring U.S. soldiers and linking that long-ago war to today’s conflict in Ukraine.

The meeting, the first between the American and Ukrainian leaders since December, comes just days after Mr. Biden gave permission to Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons to fire into Russian territory, a reversal after more than two years of limits intended to avoid an escalation with a nuclear-powered adversary.

But Mr. Biden loosened the restrictions only enough to authorize strikes against military targets just over the border in the northeast to defend Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Long-range strikes deeper into Russia are still banned.

Mr. Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials remain frustrated at the restraint and are seeking more latitude from Mr. Biden. The Ukrainians are also disappointed that Mr. Biden will not attend a peace summit in Switzerland on June 15 organized by Mr. Zelensky. Vice President Kamala Harris and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, are to attend instead.

Even though it did not meet all of Mr. Zelensky’s wishes, Mr. Biden’s reversal on the use of U.S. weapons against targets inside Russia — a tactic also endorsed by other NATO countries — provoked a predictably prickly response from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who suggested a tit-for-tat retaliation.