U.S Notified Russia Of Biden's Ukraine Visit (Photos)

The White House notified the Kremlin of Joe Biden’s intention to visit Kyiv hours before he departed for Ukraine, as the details began to emerge of how the US president pulled off his high-profile diplomatic coup.

Meticulously planned over several months by a tight circle of key advisers, Biden’s visit was described as “unprecedented in modern times” by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on the grounds that it was the first time a US president had visited “the capital of the country at war where the United States military does not control the critical infrastructure”.

“We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be travelling to Kyiv,” Sullivan said. “We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes, and because of the sensitive nature of those communications I won’t get into how they responded or what the precise nature of our message was, but I can confirm that we provided that notice.”

The US informed Moscow to avoid any misunderstanding or misjudgment between the two nuclear-armed powers, according to accounts from Washington.

Although the White House remained circumspect about how Biden travelled into Ukraine, a US official quoted by the New York Times suggested Biden arrived in Kyiv after a transatlantic flight to Poland and crossing the border by train, travelling for nearly 10 hours to Kyiv in the same way as other US officials have in recent months.