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Hey, good morning, Playbookers. I'm Ragum Wendalyn. It's Wednesday.

The big thing we're watching today, Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Poland.

It's your Politico Playbook Daily Briefing.

At 7.30 a.m. Eastern Time, Vice President Kamala Harris departs for Warsaw, Poland,

where she'll be thrust in the middle of the first major standoff between NATO countries

since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With tough sanctions in place, a Russian oil and gas embargo

announced by President Biden and a no-fly zone ruled out, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy's

desperate plea for Polish fighter jets

is the most significant outstanding request from Ukraine.

The quick backstory, Ukraine wants more planes, specifically fighter jets from Poland.

The idea would be that the U.S. would backfill those planes to Poland, and Poland would transfer

those planes to Ukraine.

But the decision to transfer the military

hardware has been hampered by the same fraught question that shadows every effort by the

U.S. and Europe to punish Russia and aid Ukraine, will it escalate the conflict in the way that

makes NATO a combatant against Russia. Harris will land in Poland on a mission to rally NATO

against Russian aggression, but her visit will now be dominated by the question of why the U.S. and Poland have so far fumbled at the transfer deal.

On a call previewing the trip, a senior administration official conceded the issue would be front and center.

Quote, we've been in dialogue with the polls for some time about how best to provide a variety of security assistance to

Ukraine. And that's a dialogue that absolutely will continue up to and as part of the vice

president's trip. It is rare that a vice president steps into the middle of such an important

...