US President Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv had begun nearly 24 hours earlier, in the middle of the East American night in a hangar at a military airport near Washington.
Unbeknownst to the world’s media, politicians and American voters, the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, designated C-32 at 4 a.m. morning (9 a.m. GMT) Sunday.
This plane, a smaller version of Air Force 1 on which American presidents usually travel, was parked a good distance from where Mr. Biden usually boards. Revealing detail of this secret trip: the shutters of each porthole had been lowered.
Fifteen minutes later, the leader, a handful of officers responsible for his security, a small medical team, his close advisers and two journalists sworn not to say anything, took off for Ukraine, nearly a year after the Russian invasion.
The American president is undoubtedly one of the most scrutinized people on the planet. His every move is covered by journalists, and every word he says in public is recorded and broadcast or published.
For this very special visit, only two of the 13 radio, television, photo and written press reporters who usually accompany him abroad were present.
The lucky winners were Sabrina Siddiqui, an editor at the Wall Street Journal — who revealed the details of the trip after receiving the green light from the White House — and Evan Vuccun, a photographer at the American news agency Associated Press.
Both were summoned to Andrews Air Force Base, on the outskirts of the American capital at 2:15 a.m.
Upon arrival, they were forced to hand over their phones, which were not returned to them until Mr Biden arrived in Kyiv, some 24 hours later.
The first leg of this journey was a flight of about seven hours from Washington to the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, where the aircraft landed to refuel. Again, the porthole shutters remained down and the passengers remained on board.
Destination of the second flight: Rzeszow-Jasionka airport, located in southeastern Poland, which has become an international hub from which billions of dollars of arms and ammunition, including American, are sent to Ukrainians .
“It’s good to be back”
During these long hours, the two journalists did not see Mr. Biden. Once at the Polish airport, they got into one of the SUVs in the procession. Journalists traveling with Mr. Biden often travel in convoy, but this time there was no siren or sign of the US president’s presence, heading for the Polish Przemysl train station, located near the Ukrainian border.
It was 9:15 p.m. in Poland when the convoy stopped in front of a train that had eight carriages. The journalists boarded, without having seen Mr. Biden. The train, which takes the route by which astronomical quantities of aid have been transported to Ukraine, but also, in the other direction, millions of Ukrainian women and children fleeing the conflict.
Most of the people on board, according to Ms Siddiqui, were part of the “important security arrangement”.
The president says he is passionate about trains. He relishes recounting the years he spent commuting by train between Washington and his home in Delaware when he was a senator and returned home to care for his two young sons after their mother died in a car accident.
One of his nicknames is “Amtrak Joe”, named after the American railway company.
This ten-hour trip to Ukraine was anything but a usual trip for an American president: it took place in a region at war and unlike presidential visits to Afghanistan or Iraq, security was not provided by American troops.
The train entered Kyiv at sunrise. Mr. Biden, who had visited the Ukrainian capital for the last time when he was vice-president of Barack Obama, landed at 8:07 a.m. local time.
“It’s good to be back in Kyiv,” he said.