WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden by all accounts was having a quiet weekend on the White House, becoming a member of his spouse Jill Biden for dinner at a restaurant on a uncommon outing in Washington on Saturday.
But behind the scenes, officers on the White House and different companies have been planning intensively for Biden to make an unannounced journey to Kyiv to indicate solidarity with Ukraine days earlier than the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.
After months of planning, Biden on Friday determined to go forward with the journey, in accordance with the White House.
White House officers stated Biden was taken to Joint Base Andrews exterior of Washington and departed at 4:15 a.m. (0915 GMT) on Sunday aboard an Air Force jet, accompanied by a handful of aides. A scaled-back news media presence went together with him: only one reporter and a photographer as a substitute of his traditional media pool.
The president flew in a single day to the United States’ Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The aircraft was refueled and he flew on to Rzeszow in southeastern Poland. After a one-hour drive, he arrived in Przemysl, a metropolis alongside the Poland-Ukraine border.
Biden then boarded a prepare and traveled 10 hours to Kyiv. By then it was Sunday night time, and Biden’s prepare traveled at midnight with a heavy safety presence on board.
The prepare got here to a cease on the Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky station within the Ukrainian capital at roughly 8 a.m. native time (0600 GMT) on Monday. The space across the platform had been cleared and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, awaited Biden and his workers.
“It’s good to be back in Kyiv,” Biden stated after stepping off the prepare.
US nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan, who accompanied the president, stated US officers did notify Russian officers that Biden can be touring to Kyiv. “We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes,” he instructed reporters on a convention name, declining to offer extra particulars.
Sullivan stated the journey had “required a security, operational, and logistical effort from professionals across the US government to take what was an inherently risky undertaking and make it a manageable level of risk.”
Residents of Kyiv dwell below the fixed risk of Russian missile and drone assaults.
After his go to, Biden received again on the prepare for the journey to Przemysl. After arriving there, he made his solution to Warsaw. —Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
