Saturday night around 7 p.m. ET, President Joe Biden and his wife were out on a Valentine’s date in Washington. They lingered over rigatoni with fennel sausage ragu before going back to the White House.
The next time he was seen in public was 36 hours later, when he walked out of St. Michael’s Cathedral in Kyiv into a bright winter day with air raid sirens going off to remind him of both the risks and the reason for going to Ukraine as the war nears its second year.
Biden’s trip was planned by a small group of his top aides over the course of several months. They knew from the start how important it would be for Biden to visit the Ukrainian capital a year after Russia tried to take it over.
Biden declared Monday -(According to Cnn News)
“One year later, Kyiv stands,”
“And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.”
But there was more to Biden’s decision to take a big risk and go to a war zone without a lot of US troops there than just a show of support. Monday, Biden talked to President Volodymyr Zelensky behind closed doors at the Mariinsky Palace. He wanted to have a detailed and urgent conversation about the next phase of the war, which US officials say has reached a critical point.
How the war goes in the next few months will depend a lot on how long the U.S. keeps helping. On Monday, Biden promised that the U.S. would keep helping. If his message was meant to reassure Ukrainians, it was also meant to remind Americans that the conflict is about a lot more than just Ukraine.
But there was more to Biden’s decision to take a big risk and go to a war zone without a lot of US troops there than just a show of support. Monday, Biden talked to President Volodymyr Zelensky behind closed doors at the Mariinsky Palace. He wanted to have a detailed and urgent conversation about the next phase of the war, which US officials say has reached a critical point.
How the war goes in the next few months will depend a lot on how long the U.S. keeps helping. On Monday, Biden promised that the U.S. would keep helping. If his message was meant to reassure Ukrainians, it was also meant to remind Americans that the conflict is about a lot more than just Ukraine.
A Secret Until the Last Minute
“This is so much larger than just Ukraine. It’s about freedom of democracy in Europe, it’s about freedom and democracy at large,” he said, his blue-and-yellow tie an overt nod to his Ukrainian hosts.
For the White House to keep Biden’s plans secret, they had to go to great lengths. In the weeks before Biden’s trip, he and his top aides turned down the idea of him going to Ukraine over and over again. In the hour before Biden’s surprise arrival in Kyiv, every effort was made to keep it that way.
Part of the reason for that was the way the trip itself went. Even as the few White House officials who were involved in the planning grew more confident that it could be done, the idea of sending the president to a war zone where the US had no control over the air space was scary.
Friday night, during a meeting in the Oval Office, Vice President Joe Biden gave the final go-ahead. As soon as Biden’s trip was set in motion, US officials took steps to let Moscow know about their plans. This was an attempt to “deconflict,” or keep things from going wrong while Biden was on the ground.
But in Washington, the secret had to be kept in order to make it all work.
Reporters didn’t know on Sunday that Biden was no longer in Washington because they weren’t told. The official White House schedule, which came out Sunday night, still said that he would leave for Poland on Monday at 7 p.m. ET. In an interview that aired Sunday morning, his top national security spokesman said there was no chance the president would go to Ukraine.
NSC spokesman John Kirby said in an interview on MSNBC’s –
“We’re going to continue to use our convening power, to marshal the world, to galvanize support for Ukraine, but there are no plans for the president to enter Ukraine on this trip,”
“The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart.”
But at that point, Biden had already left Joint Base Andrews hours before. He didn’t leave in Air Force One’s big plane, but in a smaller plane called an Air Force C-32. Only a small group of senior advisers, one reporter, and one photographer were on board. Their phones and other electronics were taken away from them before they left.
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A Train Ride Through Ukraine That Takes 10 Hours
Before going on to Poland, the plane would stop at a US base in Germany to get more fuel. As he flew east, Biden planned his talks with Zelensky, hoping to make the most of his limited time to talk about the coming months of fighting.
Biden landed in the Polish town of Rzeszow. He had been there in March of last year to see US troops stationed near the border with Ukraine and to see how humanitarian aid was helping Ukrainian refugees. During that trip 11 months ago, he talked about wanting to go a little further into Ukraine, which became a long-term goal.
Biden said –
“I’m here in Poland to see firsthand the humanitarian crisis and quite frankly, part of my disappointment is that I can’t see it firsthand like I have in other places,”
“They will not let me – understandably, I guess – cross the border and take a look at what’s going on in Ukraine.”
This time, he would go, with a larger group of US air assets keeping a close eye on the Polish border from above. Biden and the small group of advisors and Secret Service agents who went with him got on the train to Kyiv for the roughly 10-hour trip to the center of the war-torn country.
It was the end of a process that had started months before, when Biden watched as one after another of his foreign counterparts went to Ukraine.
In March 2022, the prime ministers of Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic all took trains to Kyiv for the first time. Boris Johnson, who was the British Prime Minister at the time, came on April 9. He was followed by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and the Italian Prime Minister at the time, Mario Draghi.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, and Lloyd Austin, the US Secretary of Defense, went to Kiev on April 25 to meet with Zelensky. At the time, they were the most important US officials to visit. Last year, even the first lady, Dr. Jill Biden, surprised the people of a small city in the far southwest corner of Ukraine on Mother’s Day. She talked to Olena Zelenska, who is the first lady of Ukraine.
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