Biden delivers speech on democracy after meeting with Zelensky: Live updates

US President Joe Biden will arrive at Pointe du Hoc in Normandy in the next few minutes as Western leaders mark the anniversary of the largest operation by Allied forces against Nazi Germany in World War II.

The US president will draw parallels between the more than 150,000 Allied soldiers who fought to liberate Europe from Adolf Hitler’s Nazis on June 6, 1944, and Ukraine’s current struggle against Russia’s 27-month-long invasion.

“He will speak about the stakes of this moment – an existential struggle between dictatorship and freedom,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. The speech will affirm the urgency of democracy and address the symbolism of the place.

Biden will emulate one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, who in 1984 traveled to a 100-foot cliff called Pointe du Hoc, which U.S. Army Rangers scaled on D-Day in a daring attack. Despite heavy losses, the Rangers captured German artillery pieces that could have caused even greater carnage on the invasion beaches of Omaha and Utah.

Standing with his back to the canal in front of a stone monument in the shape of the Ranger emblem, surrounded by surviving veterans of the attack, Reagan delivered one of the greatest speeches ever made by a president. “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped liberate a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war,” Reagan said. He later confessed in his diary that he was so moved that he found it hard to find the words.