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

US President Joe Biden is scheduled to arrive at Pointe du Hoc, in Normandy in minutes, as Western leaders mark the anniversary of the largest Allied forces’ operation against Nazi Germany in World War II.

The US leader will draw parallels between the more than 150,000 allies troops who fought for the liberation of Europe from Adolf Hitler’s Nazis on June 6, 1944, and Ukraine’s present fight against Russia’s raging 27-month invasion.

“He’ll talk about the stakes of that moment – an existential fight between dictatorship and freedom,” national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters. The speech will attest to the urgency of democracy, invoking the symbolism of the location.

Biden will echo one of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, who in 1984 traveled to a clifftop 100 feet high known as Pointe du Hoc, which was scaled in a daring raid by US Army Rangers on D-Day. Despite heavy losses, the Rangers seized German artillery pieces that could have caused even greater carnage of the Omaha and Utah invasion beaches.

Reagan stood in front of a stone memorial shaped into the Rangers’ emblem, with his back to the Channel, surrounded by surviving veterans of the raid, and gave one of the greatest presidential speeches. “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war,” Reagan said. He later confessed to his diary that he was so moved it was tough to get the words out.