Secrecy needed to pull off the trip
President Joe Biden did little to tip his hand about his unannounced visit to Kyiv, heading to church on Saturday afternoon and then taking his wife out to dinner at a cozy Washington restaurant.
But by the predawn hours Sunday, Biden was already aboard a U.S. military plane crossing the Atlantic, the first leg of an itinerary to the Ukrainian capital carried out under cloakand-dagger secrecy after months of meticulous planning by a close circle of advisers.
Americans woke up on a public holiday, Presidents Day, to clips of Biden in his trademark aviator sunglasses strolling in the cold next to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as air raid sirens blared in the background.
This account of how Biden slipped into a war zone is based on U.S. officials who spoke on the record after the president had departed the capital city. His trip began with a 4 a.m. departure from a military airport outside Washington, continued through a 10-hour train ride from Poland into Ukraine, and culminated in his arrival Monday morning in Kyiv, where he stayed five hours.
The war is at a pivotal stage, with a weariness setting in about the likelihood of a prolonged conflict that could put pressure on Ukraine to enter peace talks. Zelenskyy needed a shot in the arm and Biden came in person to provide that psychological boost two months after the Ukrainian leader visited Washington.
It was during a huddle in the Oval Office on Friday that Biden made his final decision to go. Even inside his own White House and Pentagon, very few people knew about it.
Indeed, Biden decided that sending the message that the U.S. stayed committed to Ukraine was worth the risk of traveling to a country at war, one where the U.S. does not control the infrastructure and has a very small diplomatic presence, was manageable.
The question then turned to the delicate matter of when to tell the Russians. “For deconfliction purposes” the Kremlin was notified “some hours before” Biden’s departure, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
No details were provided about how Russia took the news.
The trip will draw parallels with past presidential visits to war zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, and yet it was potentially far more perilous. Unlike those places, the U.S. didn’t control airspace or airports. For this reason, it was planned on a far smaller scale.
To avert the risk of any leaks and also for security reasons, it was determined that the traveling party would be very small: only a handful of Biden’s closest aides, a small medical team, two journalists and Biden’s security detail.