February 21, 2023, 2:10 PM
February 21, 2023, 2:10 PM
The surprise visit of US President Joe Biden on Mondaysa kyiv began nearly 24 hours earlier, in the middle of the eastern US night in a hangar at a military airport outside Washington.
Early Sunday morning, without the knowledge of the media, politicians and citizens Americans, the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, called the C-32.
The plane, a smaller version of the one typically used by US presidents on international trips, was parked far from where Biden would usually board it. And a revealing detail: the blinds on all the windows had been lowered.
Fifteen minutes later, Biden, a handful of agents in charge of his security, a small medical team, his closest advisers and two journalists who had sworn not to say anything, left for Ukraine, almost a year after the Russian invasion.
The president of the United States is perhaps a dand the most scrutinized people of the planet. Countless journalists follow him wherever he goes, be it to mass or international summits, and every word he says in public is recorded, transcribed and published.
In this case, however, the group of 13 radio, television, photography and written press reporters who usually accompanies you on trips abroad It was reduced to two: Sabrina Siddiqui, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, and Evan Vucci, a photographer for the American news agency Associated Press.
When the White House allowed her to publish details, Siddiqui said that she and Vucci were summoned to Andrews Air Force Base, on the outskirts of the US capital, at 02:15.
Upon arrival they had to hand over their phones, which were not returned to them until they Biden arrived in kyiv some 24 hours later.
First they flew for about seven hours from Washington to the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, where they stopped to refuel. Here, too, the window shades remained down and the travelers did not leave the plane.
The destination of the second flight was the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport, located in the southeast of Poland and converted since the war in Ukraine into an international hub from which billions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, including American ones, are funneled to the Ukrainians.
During all that time, Siddiqui and Vucci had not seen Biden. They also did not see him at the Polish airport, nor when they got into a van that was part of a caravan there.
The reporters of the entourage presidential usually go in caravans, but this time there were no sirens or anything to announce that the president of the United States was on his way to Przemysl Glowny, the Polish train station near the border with Ukraine.
It was already 9:15 p.m. local time when the caravan stopped in front of a train that had eight carriages. Reporters were told to address him, even without having seen Biden.
The train followed the route along which an enormous amount of aid has been transported to Ukraine, but also along which, in the other direction, millions of Ukrainian women and children have fled the conflict.
Most of the people on boardaccording to Siddiqui, were part of the “strong security device.”
Biden is known for his fondness for trains.
He loves to reminisce about his years of traveling by train between Washington and his home in Delaware, when he was a senator raising his two young children after the death of his first wife in a car accident. One of his nicknames is “Amtrak Joe”, in reference to the American railway company.
This 10-hour trip to Ukraine, however, it was anything but a regular ride for an American president: It took place in a war zone and, unlike previous presidential visits to Afghanistan or Iraq, US troops provided no security.
The train arrived in kyiv at dawn.
Biden, who had last visited the Ukrainian capital when he was Vice President of Barack Obama (2009-2017), ddisembarked at around 08:07 local time.
