WARSAW, Poland >> President Joe Biden’s sudden appearance in Kyiv’s presidential palace Monday morning was intended first as a morale booster for shellshocked Ukrainians in the midst of a bleak winter of power outages and a bitter war of attrition.

But it was also the first of several direct challenges on this trip to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who a year ago this week believed the Ukrainian capital would become Russian-controlled territory again in a matter of days, moving Putin closer to his ambition of restoring the empire of Peter the Great.

“Putin’s war of conquest is failing,” Biden declared from the palace, his very presence there, alongside President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meant to symbolize Russia’s failure to take a capital that today remains brimming with life, its restaurants overflowing even as warning sirens blare.

“One year later,” he said, “Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”

The war in Ukraine is about power and the principle of territorial sovereignty, and whether the Western-designed global order that Americans thought would prevail for decades will, in fact, survive new challenges from Moscow and Beijing. But it is increasingly a contest between two aging Cold Warriors, one 70 years old and another who just turned 80, who have been circling each other for years and now are engaged in everything short of direct battle.

Today, the vastly different world views of these two leaders will become vividly apparent in a rare split-screen moment. They will both deliver speeches, several hours and 800 miles apart, vowing to stick with the war until the other retreats. Putin will go first, marking the anniversary of his ill-fated invasion with what, by all indications, will be a renewal of a strategy that has already led to 200,000 Russian casualties, by British and U.S. estimates, and as many as 60,000 Russians killed.

Putin will make the case anew that he is not only saving Ukraine from “Nazism” but also saving Russia itself from being overrun by NATO — a claim that seems ridiculous to Europeans but that has become a rallying cry in Moscow. If the past year is any guide, he is almost certain to cast his war as a battle for the restoration of Russia’s historic lands. U.S. intelligence officials say they are picking up indications that he may soon mobilize more Russians into the military, adding hundreds of thousands to the 300,000 already called up.

Hours later, from Warsaw’s ancient Royal Castle, on a hill over the Polish capital, Biden is expected to build on the case he made in Kyiv on Monday morning that in the battle between democracy and autocracy, the former has emerged the winner of the first year of what promises to be a long conflict.

Biden was in Kyiv on Monday for less than six hours before the Secret Service whisked him out of the city. (Notably, the White House informed the Kremlin of Biden’s impending visit before the president arrived, not as a diplomatic courtesy but for what Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called “deconfliction purposes” — essentially, to avoid a Russian strike, accidental or otherwise. Sullivan added, “I won’t get into how they responded.”)

The covert nature of the Kyiv visit, and the vastly different world views the speeches will represent, underscore the degree to which the battle between these two men has echoes of exactly what Biden said he wanted to avoid: a replay of the worst days of the Cold War.

It is not a direct parallel, though. This time, China is a key player, which is why U.S. officials spent the weekend publicly warning the government of Xi Jinping not to provide “lethal support” that an increasingly stretched Russian military desperately needs.

In fact, just as Biden arrived in Kyiv, China’s most senior foreign policy official, Wang Yi, arrived in Moscow for meetings that promise to be far friendlier than his clash Saturday night with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. U.S. officials say Wang and other Chinese officials want to help Putin confront what they view as an arrogant, hypocritical and declining United States. But China says the relationship has its limits — to the point that Xi publicly warned Russia against using nuclear weapons.

Today’s succession of speeches will also reflect the two presidents’ different constituencies and political vulnerabilities.

Biden’s speech will be open to the public in Poland. Putin will speak in a hall across Red Square from the Kremlin, with Russia’s ruling elite — regional governors, lawmakers and other officials — in attendance.