The cap­i­tal city of the Unit­ed States rolled out the wel­come mat today for Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy, who came to Amer­i­ca to meet with Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and deliv­er an incred­i­ble, inspir­ing speech to a joint ses­sion of Con­gress about Ukraine’s fight for free­dom in the face of Vladimir Putin’s mur­der­ous war of aggres­sion against a neigh­bor it had once pledged nev­er to invade.

Mak­ing his first trip abroad since the esca­la­tion of the war Putin began many years ago in an attempt to gob­ble up Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry and weak­en the sec­ond largest coun­try in Europe, Zelen­skyy explained in a series of appear­ances that Ukraine is fight­ing against autoc­ra­cy and oppres­sion on behalf of the entire free world and needs all of the help that it can get from allies like the Unit­ed States.

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion made sure that Zelen­skyy got the most out of his vis­it. Zelen­skyy’s itin­er­ary includ­ed an Oval Office sit-down, a press con­fer­ence in the East Room, and a prime­time speech to a joint ses­sion of Congress.

The city gov­ern­ment, mean­while, made sure that Ukrain­ian and Amer­i­can flags adorned the cap­i­tal’s broad boule­vards. May­or Muriel Bows­er offered a greet­ing on behalf of the peo­ple who live and work in the nation’s capital.

For Pres­i­dent Biden, it was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stand shoul­der to shoul­der and talk face to face. The pres­i­dent has said on more than one occa­sion that he val­ues in-per­son diplo­ma­cy and per­son­al rela­tion­ships. Zelen­skyy knows that, and has been seek­ing the very Oval Office meet­ing he got today for an extreme­ly long time.

“This vis­it to Wash­ing­ton, your first trip out­side Ukraine since Feb­ru­ary, comes as Pres­i­dent Putin is esca­lat­ing his attacks — his bru­tal attacks — tar­get­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture to make life as hard as pos­si­ble for not only inno­cent Ukraini­ans but chil­dren and young chil­dren, and every­thing from orphan­ages to schools.  It’s just out­ra­geous what he’s doing,” Biden not­ed in com­ments at the press conference.

“We had a very good nego­ti­a­tion and talks about our strate­gic steps — which we dis­cussed with Pres­i­dent Biden — and what we expect next year and for what we are prepar­ing.  This is very impor­tant for all Ukraini­ans, and I am hope­ful,” said Zelen­skyy, who added that despite the forth­com­ing change in U.S. House con­trol, he feels good about the future of bipar­ti­san, bicam­er­al sup­port for Ukraine.

In a poignant moment dur­ing the Oval Office meet­ing (which had what’s known in WHCA lin­go as a pool spray), Zelen­skyy pre­sent­ed Biden with a Ukrain­ian Cross of Mil­i­tary Mer­it that he explained was from the cap­tain of a HIMARS battery.

“One guy is a real hero, he is a cap­tain, who asked me to give you his award. He is the cap­tain of the HIMARS bat­tery. He is very brave. And he said, ‘pass this on to a very brave Pres­i­dent.’ I give you the Cross of Mil­i­tary Mer­it. It’s from him. And the let­ter – I did­n’t read it. It’s in Ukrain­ian, but there’s a trans­la­tion here,” Zelen­skyy said, to a very hon­ored and delight­ed Pres­i­dent Biden.

Lat­er in the day, towards the end of his joint address to Con­gress, Zelen­skyy unfurled a flag signed by Ukrain­ian sol­diers and gave it to Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi and Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, who held it up to thun­der­ous applause from Con­gress. Pelosi then pre­sent­ed Zelen­skyy with a tri­an­gu­lar box con­tain­ing a U.S. flag that had flown over the Capi­tol that day. The rich­ly sym­bol­ic moment under­scored the impor­tance of the U.S.-Ukraine rela­tion­ship to both countries.

Zelen­skyy’s speech was a tri­umph. It was a well-writ­ten, well-deliv­ered, well-received address that both con­veyed the strug­gles of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple in their fight for free­dom and a peace­ful, pros­per­ous future as well as the coun­try’s grat­i­tude for aid pack­ages and weapons pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States.

As impor­tant as Amer­i­can help so far has been, Ukraine needs more, Zelen­skyy said. The Krem­lin is a dif­fi­cult foe: it has access to more mon­ey, equip­ment, and man­pow­er than Ukraine does. But Zelen­skyy empha­sized that Ukraine has fought well this year and can be vic­to­ri­ous with the con­tin­ued help of the free world.

And he’s cer­tain­ly right about that. Now would be a ter­ri­ble time for the U.S. to hold back in invest­ing in Ukraine’s suc­cess. And it is an invest­ment — not char­i­ty, as Zelen­skyy mem­o­rably said in one of the address’ most stir­ring lines.

Ukraini­ans aren’t just fight­ing for them­selves, they’re fight­ing on behalf of all democ­ra­cies against the greed and ambi­tion of dic­ta­tors like Vladimir Putin.

A Krem­lin vic­to­ry would be dis­as­trous in every respect, and would increase the like­li­hood of a wider war that could involve NATO. All who want a peace­ful world should be invest­ed in the suc­cess of Ukraine’s defense and lib­er­a­tion, and should unre­served­ly stand with Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy and the Ukrain­ian people.

In anoth­er of the address’ most impor­tant lines, Zelen­skyy said: “Ukraine nev­er asked Amer­i­can sol­diers to fight on our land instead of us. I assure you that Ukrain­ian sol­diers can per­fect­ly oper­ate Amer­i­can tanks and planes themselves.”

To date, the U.S. has pro­vid­ed drones, mis­siles, artillery, ammu­ni­tion, and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent kinds of vehi­cles, but not tanks and planes, which Ukraine would real­ly like to have for its defense. (Ukraine is at least final­ly get­ting its own Patri­ot mis­sile sys­tem, but could use more of those too.) As the Pres­i­dent of a nation fight­ing for its sur­vival, Zelen­skyy appro­pri­ate­ly made the most of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to make the case for sig­nif­i­cant­ly increased mil­i­tary assis­tance from Congress.

Though he deliv­ered many of the lines of his speech quick­ly, these par­tic­u­lar lines were deliv­ered much more slow­ly, and they land­ed about as well as they could have, with many mem­bers of Con­gress ris­ing to their feet in support.

“The ship­ment of the Patri­ot is a deci­sion that sur­prised even Ukrain­ian offi­cials,” Politi­co report­ed today, detail­ing Ukraine’s request for more advanced weapons and the Biden admin­is­tra­tion’s response. “The Patri­ot sys­tem is a long-sought prize for Kyiv and the ver­sion head­ed to Ukraine is built to inter­cept bal­lis­tic mis­siles. That would be a major addi­tion to Kyiv’s defens­es against con­tin­ued Russ­ian attacks on the capital’s crit­i­cal infrastructure.”

Ukraine would like to have longer-range mis­siles for the next stage of the war, but U.S. offi­cials won’t agree to send them, at least not yet.

Their think­ing, as Politi­co described it, is that “send­ing long-range mis­siles to Kyiv could risk pro­vok­ing Putin using poten­tial­ly even more lethal weapons inside Ukraine.” The Ukraini­ans have point­ed out that Putin’s forces are already bom­bard­ing Ukraine’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture and attack­ing civil­ians. Zelen­skyy’s trip to D.C. and suc­cess­ful acqui­si­tion of a Patri­ot are already guar­an­teed to enrage Putin. So why not arm the Ukraini­ans with longer range missiles?

While that debate con­tin­ues, Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy will be fly­ing home, on a VIP trans­port pro­vid­ed by the Unit­ed States, hav­ing made the most of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to urge sup­port for Ukraine’s fight to U.S. lead­er­ship and the Amer­i­can people.