New Delhi: At the Oval Office last Friday, US President Joe Biden gave the final nod to secret plans of his visit to Kyiv – the rare time that an American President has gone to a war zone where the US has no control over the air space.
On Saturday night, Biden stepped out for a Valentine week dinner with his wife before returning to the White House.
Thirty-six hours later, he was seen walking out of St Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with air sirens wailing overhead.
“Cloaked in secrecy… Biden’s trip was the work of months of planning by only a small handful of his senior-most aides,” CNN reported.
Biden declared Monday, merely four days before the first anniversary of the country’s war with Russia, “One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”
Keeping Biden’s plans secret required “extraordinary measures”, since the President himself and top aides had repeatedly shot down the possibility of a trip to Ukraine.
But the small circle of people in the White House, who were in with the plan, were confident it was an achievable undertaking, despite the “fluid nature” of the trip.
As soon as the plan firmed, US officials took steps to notify Moscow of their plans, an attempt at “deconfliction” meant to avoid unthinkable disaster while Biden was on the ground, CNN reported.
In Washington, however, secrecy had to be maintained. No notice was given to reporters on Sunday that the President was not in Washington, the report said.
In fact, the official White House schedule, released Sunday evening, “still listed his departure for Poland at 7 p.m. ET on Monday”.
His top national security spokesman John Kirby even denied there was a possibility the President would visit Ukraine in an interview that aired Sunday morning.
But hours before that interview, Biden had already lifted off from Joint Base Andrews – “not in the usual plane that is synonymous with Air Force One, but instead in a smaller Air Force C-32.”
Accompanying him was a small group of senior advisers, the Secret Service, one reporter and one photographer whose electronic devices were taken from them before departure, the report added.
There was a stop to refuel at a US base in Germany and then the plane flew towards Poland.
Biden landed in Rzeszow, the Polish town where he’d stopped last March to visit US troops deployed near the Ukrainian border, the report said, adding, “This time around, with an expanded set of US air assets overhead keeping close watch at the Polish border, he would make the trip.”
From there, the US President boarded the train to Kyiv for the roughly 10-hour trip to the centre of Ukraine. It was a train other world leaders had taken before him.
CNN quoted a source as saying that Biden wanted to visit the capital because only Kyiv “made sense as a venue”.
Also read: Biden walks through Kyiv to show resolve ahead of war’s anniversary