First lady Jill Biden will travel to Romania and Slovakia over Mother's Day weekend to meet with displaced Ukrainian refugees.
According to The Hill, the first lady's visit will include meetings with U.S. troops and government officials as well as Ukrainian mothers and children who fled their homes due to the Russian invasion.
Katherine Jellison, a professor of U.S. women's and gender history at Ohio University, said: ''Dr. Biden very much has a public image as a concerned mother herself and a mother whose known tragedy herself. This may be a very important moment for her in her career as first lady to be, as her husband is often times called, the consoler-in-chief.''
In March, President Joe Biden traveled to Poland, where he met with refugees displaced by the war. Since then, the U.S. has pledged to accept 100,000 and give $1 billion in aid to European nations to handle the influx of migrants.
Jill Biden's ''role there will have political impact,'' said Katherine Sibley, director of the American Studies Program at St. Joseph's University. ''It's not just the support and nurturing aspect of the first lady, but also the soft power, the enhancement of a power of the presidency that is being seen here.''
White House press secretary Jen Psaki also commented, noting the significance of the first lady visiting on Mother's Day.
''The president is grateful for her willingness to do this and for the important role she'll play in representing the United States during her visit to Europe and through these meetings,'' Psaki said.
Jill Biden will make her first stop on Friday at Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport in southeastern Romania to meet with U.S. service members. From there, she will travel to Bucharest, the capital, where on Saturday she will meet with members of the Romanian government, humanitarian aid workers, U.S. Embassy staff, and educators who are helping the displaced Ukrainian children.
On Sunday, Mother's Day, the first lady will travel to Košice and Vyšné Nemecké, Slovakia, to meet with Ukrainian refugees and the Slovakians supporting them, as well as humanitarian aid workers.
Sibley said the visit will have ''international impacts. It has, obviously, a broad humanitarian impact. We really see here that she is carrying out some of her own interests and she's also promoting the interests of the administration, but we can see they are all complementary, which is quite striking.''
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