US President Joe Biden‘s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday has raised huge questions about how the Democrat managed to get to Kiev safely.
Despite the fact that the White House had warned the Russian government about the trip hours before, the logistics of such an unusual visit would certainly involve unusual means of transport.
For security reasons, the travel itinerary was only partially revealed after Biden returned from the country. What is known is that the US president flew a Boeing 747 Air Force One to Warsaw, the capital of Poland, and from there he would have taken a train during the night, on a 10-hour journey.
The most tracked flights right now are of course the two Boeing E-3B Sentry monitoring along the Polish/Ukraine border during @POTUS visit to Ukrainehttps://t.co/UFDkkAWTpAhttps://t.co/ljha6tTyzY pic.twitter.com/C9nirUx83r
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 20, 2023
Despite not entering Ukraine’s airspace, Biden’s entourage required extra efforts from the US Armed Forces.
This morning in Europe, it was possible to follow two Boeing E-3 Sentry flying simultaneously over the Polish-Ukrainian border, as well as other reconnaissance planes that shared ADS-B signals.
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The presence of KC-135T aerial refueling jets is also an expected sign of USAF fighter patrols in the region, prepared for any sign of risk to the US president.
Visit planned by months
The historic visit of a US president to a country at war is unique in that it does not involve the US military in action, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Due to its unprecedented nature, the trip, which had been planned for months, could have been canceled at any time. Biden was last seen on Saturday night and only appeared publicly again on Monday, already in Ukrainian territory.
The meeting with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, even had a moment of apprehension, when sirens were heard, warning about the takeoff of a MiG-31 fighter in Belarus, carrying a Kinzhal hypersonic missile, capable of hitting targets without being possible to react in time to it.
The information was possibly obtained by the US surveillance scheme and passed on to the government of Ukraine. Despite this, Biden and his entourage were not shaken by the possible risk, and followed the protocol of the trip, carried out on the eve of the Russian invasion to complete one year, next Friday.
