In the middle of the night, on a commercial plane: This is how Biden flew (in the greatest secrecy) to Kiev

Joe Biden attends Saturday afternoon service. Then he visited the National Museum of American History with his wife, Jill Biden.

Later both of them were seen at the cozy restaurant Red Hen in Washington DC. It all looked like they were going to spend the evening together. Nothing turned out to be less true. After dinner, the president completely disappeared from the radar.

The president’s trip to Kiev “for security reasons” was top secret. So travel without the bells and whistles and without the usual media facilities. Only a few of the president’s confidants and a couple of journalists traveled with her. Everyone had to use their electrical devices to the security services before leaving.

The president even had to do without his trusty plane. Biden traveled in an Air Force C-32, a converted Boeing 757 that is not normally used for international travel and only flies to smaller airports.

At about 4:15 am, the plane took off from Joint Base Andrews, an airport in Maryland. Air Force One is also parked there, but this time the group has chosen a different plane. The flight was named SAM060 (SAM stands for Special air mission).

The plane stops in Germany and finally lands in Rzeszow, Poland. There is the airport where important guests have landed before and where expensive Western weapons arrive to be transported to Ukraine.

Przemyśl, a Polish village located right on the border with Ukraine, is half an hour’s drive from the airport. From there, Biden travels to the capital by train, the same train that our Prime Minister Alexander De Croo took during his visit to Ukraine. The train he is on is not an ordinary train.

It is mainly used for government purposes and also contains a meeting room, restaurant, etc. The train also does not run directly from the border to Kyiv, but it does stop sometimes or take a different route each time. In this way it is difficult for the enemy to sabotage the train journey.

This train journey will take 10 hours.

At eight in the morning, Biden arrived in Kiev. At that time, few Ukrainians knew about the visit. And the Russians… The US security services contacted Russia hours before Biden’s departure.

“The Russians have informed us that President Biden will be traveling to Kiev. We did this a few hours before he left for conflict resolution purposes,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.

The first reports indicate that something is afoot in the Ukrainian capital. Videos of the closed roads and a long procession appear on Twitter. From that moment, the (international) media’s attention was riveted on Kiev.

During his five-hour visit to the capital, the president made stops at various locations in the city. He doesn’t travel in his presidential limousine, but rather in a black SUV. At that point, there was no official communication with the Ukrainians that the American president had set foot on the ground.

At 10:54 the confirmation will come: President Biden is in Kyiv. This was the first time in modern history that an American leader visited a war zone outside of the US protection zone.

Shortly after noon, Biden left Ukraine and traveled to Poland. “Kiev has taken a piece of my heart,” he wrote on Twitter after his departure.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has arrived safely in Poland. That writes for the international news agency Reuters on the basis of the Polish Foreign Minister.