President Biden’s clandestine trip to Ukraine was the first time in modern history that a U.S. leader visited a war zone with no American military presence. The risks were considerable, but the symbolic and diplomatic value of shoring up support for a country ravaged by a U.S. geopolitical foe tipped the scales against caution.
The first logistical shift was jettisoning Air Force One — Biden disappeared into the sky for a planned visit to Poland on an Air Force C-32, a modified Boeing normally used for domestic trips. The president’s motorcade had left the White House at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, February 19 and he would not be seen in public again until videos of him in Kyiv began to circulate the next day.
Gregg Brunson-Pitts, a former director of the White House Travel Office under President Bush, explained to National Review that presidential trips within Washington, D.C., are a massive undertaking, let alone international ones with clandestine detours.
National-security advisor Jake Sullivan explained last week that a small group of senior White House officials planned the trip in secret for months. However, Biden only gave the final sign-off days before the trip, according to an Associated Press report.
Sullivan said the visit “required a security, operational, and logistical effort from professionals across the U.S. government to take what was an inherently risky undertaking and make it a manageable risk.”
The call sign “SAM060,” for Special Air Mission, was used for the plane instead of the usual “Air Force One.” After refueling in Germany, Biden’s plane switched off its transponder for the roughly hour-long flight to Rzeszow, Poland, the airport through which billions in Western arms transit. Visitors into into Ukraine use it to switch over to a train for the ten-hour trip into Kyiv.
Though U.S. officials had tipped Russia to the president’s trip, two United States Air Force surveillance aircraft were seen circling near the Poland-Ukraine border. These planes monitor for incoming threats such as missiles using a distinctive radar dish. They can also perform other surveillance and communication tasks.
The Ukraine airspace has been closed since the February 24, 2022 invasion.
Many roads in Ukraine are also barely accessible due to heavy fighting. Rail travel remains the best form of travel for foreign leaders visiting in shows of support.
The leaders of three central and eastern European countries — namely, Poland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic — were the first to visit on March 15, 2022. The move was analogous to a trip from eastern European leaders to the capital of Georgia in 2008 as Russian troops marched toward the city. The president of Ukraine was one of them.
Polish president Lech Kaczynski’s remarks to a crowd in Tbilisi during the visit have proved prescient.
“We also realize all too well that what has befallen Georgia today may befall Ukraine tomorrow, the Baltic States a day after, and then perhaps also my own country: Poland,” Kaczynski declared, as quoted in Deutsche Welle.
Since the March 15 trip, leaders like Boris Johnson, Justin Trudeau, Olaf Scholz, and most recently, Joe Biden, have made their way to Kyiv.
A journey by train to the capital is not without risk. Russian missile strikes continue to rain down on Ukrainian infrastructure in order to disrupt arms supplies. Tracks, bridges, and stations have been destroyed.
In a particularly deadly incident for civilians, a Russian rocket killed 25 Ukrainians at a railway station in the eastern town of Chaplyne. Dozens more were injured.
Leaders are protected by their own national-security personnel as well Ukrainian security guards. The location of the trains is ever-changing and secrecy is of the utmost importance. Unlike Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled secretly to Ukraine last year April, only making the journey public after the fact.
Brunson-Pitts explained that the entourage is decreased for trips into hotspots, adding that typically, “the press corps isn’t clued in ahead of time.”
Biden traveled with a far smaller than usual retinue: a few staffers, his Secret Service detail, the military aide carrying the so-called “nuclear football,” and a small medical team.
According to Politico, Biden’s trip to Ukraine saw the full pool of reporters originally scheduled to fly with the president to Poland left behind. They departed as planned on Monday of last week without the president in tow.
The two journalists who made the covert journey with Biden said they were informed about the trip on the same day Biden signed off on it. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield swore them to secrecy, instructing them to look for departure information in an email with the subject line: “Arrival instructions for the golf tourney.”
Biden regarded the visit as symbolically important to put further pressure on a Russian invasion that is flagging. The move was seemingly effective if the goal was to ramp up tensions: Russian president Vladimir Putin suspended the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the two countries the very next day.
Biden’s predecessors have all made similar trips into war zones: from Roosevelt and Eisenhower to Clinton and Bush.
According to Brunson-Pitts, Bush’s clandestine trips abroad often featured similar measures to those taken during Biden’s recent trip. The traveling package of staff and support was made as small as possible, the press corps was largely left in the dark, and unannounced detours were often tacked on to planned stops
Bush’s first unannounced trip abroad was the 2003 Thanksgiving Day visit to Iraq, where the president wanted to renew commitment to the effort 6 months in. He thought it important to boost morale by breaking bread with the troops.
His final unannounced trip was to Iraq and Afghanistan in December of 2008, weeks before President Barack Obama’s inauguration. It was the last time Bush would visit Iraq as president and a culminating point in the war. At a press conference in Baghdad, the president famously dodged two shoes thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist, later quipping it was part of democracy, the same as “going to a political rally and having people yell at you.”
Biden’s trip to Ukraine passed without incident.
He was soon back on the train to Poland: the leader of the free world passing once again through ravaged country.