Biden last visited the Ukrainian capital when he was vice president. (File)
Washington:
President Joe Biden’s surprise visit Monday morning to wartime Kiev began in the dead of night at a military airport hangar outside Washington.
At 4 a.m. (9 a.m. GMT) Sunday — unbeknownst to the world media, Washington’s political establishment or American voters — the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757 known as a C-32.
The plane, a smaller version of the one US presidents normally use on international travel, was parked far away from where Biden would usually board. And a telling detail: the blinds of every window had been pulled down.
Fifteen minutes later, Biden, a handful of security personnel, a small medical team, close advisers and two journalists sworn to secrecy, left for a war zone.
The US president is perhaps the most constantly monitored person in the world.
Members of the press follow Biden wherever he goes — whether to ecclesiastical or international summits. Every word he says in public is recorded, transcribed and published.
In this case, the usual pool of reporters, which would put 13 journalists from radio, TV, photographic and written press organizations at risk for foreign travel, was reduced to one photographer and one writer.
The reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui of The Wall Street Journal, revealed — after the White House authorized details to be published — that she and the photographer were summoned to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington at 2:15 a.m.
Their phones were confiscated — not to be returned until Biden finally arrived in the Ukrainian capital about 24 hours later.
They flew about seven hours from Washington to the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, to refuel. Here too, the roller blinds stayed down and they did not leave the plane.
The next flight was to Poland and landed at Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport. This may be a Polish airport, but since the war in Ukraine it has also become an international hub for the US-led effort to arm the Ukrainians, funneling billions of dollars worth of weapons and ammunition.
‘Good to be back’
Until now, Siddiqui and the photographer, Evan Vucci of the Associated Press, had not seen Biden himself. That didn’t change at the airport or when they got into a parade of SUVs.
Reporters traveling with Biden often go in motorcades, but here was something very different: no sirens or anything else to announce that the US president was heading to Przemysl Glowny — the Polish train station near the Ukrainian border.
It was already 9:15 PM local time when they stopped at a train. The journalists were told to get in, still without seeing Biden.
On a route that has brought untold amounts of aid to Ukraine and untold numbers of Ukrainian citizens who have fled the other way, the train had about eight cars. Most of the people on board, Siddiqui said, were “heavy security.”
Biden is an outspoken train buff.
He likes to talk about his years commuting by train between Washington and home in Delaware when he was a senator and raised two young sons after their mother was killed in a car accident. One of his nicknames is “Amtrak Joe.”
However, this 10-hour trip to Ukraine was unlike any modern US president – a trip to an active war zone where, unlike presidential visits to Afghanistan or Iraq, US troops are not the ones providing security.
With the rising sun, the train rolled into Kiev.
Biden, who had last visited the Ukrainian capital when he was vice president under Barack Obama, disembarked at about 8:07 a.m.
“It’s good to be back in Kiev,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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