Just Visiting Briefly

"While the president clearly intended to bolster the confidence of Ukraine, and the commitment of ambivalent Europeans and neo-isolationist Americans, his real audiences lay elsewhere, as his remarks about western strength indicated."

"Russia has cycled through a series of theories of victory in Ukraine -- that Kyiv's leaders would flee, that Ukraine's population would not fight, that its army would be crumpled up by a sudden blitz or by grinding assaults."

"It has been reduced to one last hope; that Vladimir Putin's will is stronger than Joe Biden's. And Biden just said, bydeed as well as word, 'Oh no it's not'."

Eliot Cohen, former George W. Bush administration official, Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University 

"When [Russian President] Vladimir Putin launched his invasion nearly one year ago, he thought Ukraine was weak and theWest was divided. He thought he could outlast us. But he was dead wrong."

"The cost that Ukraine has had to pay is extraordinarily high. Sacrifices have been far too great ..."

"We know that there will be difficult days and weeks and years ahead."

U.S. President Joe Biden

"Of course for the Kremlin, this will be seen as further proof that the United States has bet on Russia's strategic defeat in the war and that the war itself has turned irrevocably into a war between Russia and the West."

Tatiana Stanovaya, Russian political analyst

President Biden made a 10-hour train journey from Poland to Kyiv   Reuters

 

European leaders in the past year have made surprise visits to Kyiv, to walk alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as much to give confidence and comfort to the people of Ukraine and its president, during this time of their existential testing, as to demonstrate to Vladimir Putin that his ill-considered 'special military operation' in the country has gained him the enmity and the motivation for these countries to sanction Russia and to commit irrevocably to arming Ukraine for its defence and counter-offensive.

The American president was said by insiders to be champing at the bit to do the same, and so he did just that, quietly, without fanfare, confidently and authoritatively. He surreptitiously under cover of night travelled in an American Air Force C-32 Boeing 757, not Air Force One, to Poland, leaving the White House on Sundayat 3:30 a;m. Twenty hours later he disembarked by train  in downtown Kyiv after first stopping in Poland. The first such incident in modern history when an American leader travelled to a war zone absent the U.S. military.

Over the space of five hours he met and travelled with the Ukrainian President driven in a black SUV, not the presidential imousine he is accustomed to. He was there, but his presence kept a tightly guarded confidence. Inevitably public attention was drawn to the odd presence of long motorcades and closed off roads. Soon private onlooker videos began circulating of those motorcades along access-restricted streets and people clued in to the hugely unusual presence of a primary world leader.

American surveillance planes kept watch over Kyiv from Polish airspace while Mr. Biden was in the capitl city. Centrral Kyiv was absent its usual noise of a busy population as a result of the cordoned-off streets. Through diplomatic messaging, the information had been conveyed to the Kremlin before Mr. Biden's arrival, when Moscow would be best off not to schedule any bombing raids. A small, elite retinue accompanied the U.S. president.

Among them the ubiquitous Secret Service detail, and a military aide conveying the "Nuclear football" along with a small medical staff. It was only when Messrs. Biden and Zelenskyy left the motorcade for a brief walk-about to appaoach the gold-domed St.Michael's Cathedral, strolling unconcernedly through the front gates that initial images of Kyiv hosting President Biden began to pop up on Ukrainian social media sites.

U.S.President Joe Biden walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at St.Michael's Cathedral during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday. Zelenskyyy called it the most important visit in the entire  history of Ukraine-U.S. relations'.  Even Vucci/Pool/ via Reuters

"The West is now unified in its aims. Long gone are debates over Iraq and Afghanistan, charges of American unilateralism, and criticism of European quiescence."

"No one harangued allies about free-riding or pointed out their failure to spend two percent of GDP on defence."

Richard Fontaine, chief executive, Center for  New American Security

"We should be grateful every day that the last Atlanticist is in the Oval Office right now, but we shouldn't take it for granted."

"The outsized investment in European security right now by the US. administration will be an exception."

Thorsten Benner, director, Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin