An old gentleman's visit

The unannounced visit of US President Joe Biden to Kyiv has returned the rather boring Ukrainian topic to the front pages of the American media.

Newspapers, websites and TV channels serving the interests of the Democratic Party and the Washington establishment did not skimp on big words, praising the courage and courage of the elderly owner of the White House.

Many of the comments at the same time were written like a carbon copy.

Associated Press journalists Evan Vucci, John Lester, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller describe Biden's trip to Ukraine as "a defiant display of Western solidarity with a country that is still waging what he called a 'brutal and unjust war' days before the first anniversary Russian invasion."

Peter Nicholas of NBC News declared the US president's visit to Kyiv "unexpected and historic", demonstrating "support and solidarity with a democratic country."

Joanna Kakissis and NPR's Deepa Shivaram called Biden's visit to the Ukrainian capital "an audacious and somewhat risky trip to express solidarity with the Ukrainians."

Audacity, solidarity, risk ... It seems that the manual for all these keyboard workers was lowered by the same one.

But was there really a risk?

And was there arrogance?

Biden's trip to Kyiv was "carefully planned" for several months, the Politico website writes.

Only a narrow circle of trusted persons knew about it: “small groups of people in the office of the White House Chief of Staff, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the US Secret Service and in the intelligence community.”

All this was done, of course, to ensure the safety of the aged "leader of the free world" - after all, he had an "unprecedented" trip to the "active war zone", where, according to the same officials, there is no US military presence.

In the end, everything turned out quite comically.

“Mr. Biden quietly slipped out of Washington in the dark of the night,” The New York Times pumps up drama.

Air Force One took off at 0415 Sunday East Coast time.

There were only a few reporters with him, sworn to secrecy and without phones, Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to the President, Jan O'Malley Dillon, Deputy Chief of Staff, and Annie Tomasini, Director of Operations for the Oval Office."

The whole company landed in Polish Rzeszow, from where they had to get to Kyiv.

The question was how to get there.

“Mr. Biden’s visit to Kiev recalled the secret missions of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump to Iraq and Afghanistan at the height of the wars in these countries,” write NYT columnists Mark Santora, Peter Baker and Michael Shear, “but the president’s arrival in Ukraine without the American military presence that was "on the ground" in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the control of airspace, presented a security problem of a completely different magnitude.

US warplanes were seen flying over Poland near the border, but officials said they did not enter Ukrainian airspace."

The aircraft option was deemed too dangerous.

And rightly so - Ukrainian air defense is known for its unpredictability, and although Air Force One is much better protected than a peaceful Polish tractor, it was decided to send Biden to Kyiv by train.

Considering that the owner of the White House made the final decision to visit Kiev 48 hours before the visit, they did not have time to provide him with a special comfortable train, so the US President had to be content with the usual blue-and-yellow Ukrzaliznytsia carriage.

“That was the risk Joe Biden was willing to take,” Kate Bedingfield, director of public affairs for the White House, told reporters.

“It's important for him to show his worth even when it's difficult, and he tasked his team to make it happen no matter how difficult the logistics were.

He wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Zelensky and remind the world that Kyiv is still standing and that the United States will not stop supporting Ukraine.”

But, as it turned out, Biden's advisers still did not dare to let him go to Ukraine without asking for security guarantees.

“The White House did not go into details,” reports the Associated Press, “but national security adviser Jake Sullivan said he notified Moscow of Biden’s visit to Kiev shortly before he left Washington “in order to resolve the conflict” to avoid any miscalculations. which could lead to direct conflict between the two nuclear powers.”

The provision of guarantees in Moscow, by the way, was not confirmed.

But there really wasn't much risk.

Almost, because Ukraine is still Ukraine: after Sleepy Joe safely returned to Polish Rzeszow, the Kyiv-Warsaw train derailed in the Volyn region.

But in any case, nothing threatened the US President from the RF Armed Forces.

So he got the opportunity to heroically walk along the streets of the “mother of Russian cities” prudently cleared of Kiev and play imperturbable Captain America under the roar of an air raid (the alarm, of course, turned out to be false, but this allowed journalists to write that Biden fearlessly ignored the siren warning of the raid ).

What was this whole performance or, rather, a circus for?

When asked by a reporter about the purpose of his visit to Kyiv, Biden replied: he was supposed to show that the United States remains with Ukraine and "does not leave."

Sullivan, his national security adviser, elaborated: "Today's visit was an attempt to show, not just say, that we will continue to be strong."

“The first photographs of President Joe Biden (with President Vladimir Zelensky, with roaring air raid sirens, against the backdrop of Mikhailovskaya Square) produced exactly the impression they were intended for: surprise, amazement, respect,” writes on the pages The Atlantic Ann Applebaum (author of a book on the history of the Gulag and wife of Polish Russophobe politician Radosław Sikorski).

- He is the American President.

He made an unprecedented trip to a war zone where there are no American troops to protect him.

And yes, he's old.

But he went anyway."

Great courage - to go, realizing that no one will touch you!

But liberal journalists see the world through their own lenses, which are quite specific.

For example, Applebaum's colleague Eliot A. Cohen even claims that by taking a trip to Kyiv, Biden "destroyed Putin's last hope."

“Simply by taking a risky trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance,” the journalist said.

What is the strategic importance of this step?

“It was not a trick, but an act of statesmanship,” says Cohen.

Biden's visit comes at a time when a lot is hanging in the balance.

According to the US government, the Chinese have begun hinting at arms shipments to Russia, which would significantly change this war.”

Indeed, on the sidelines of the Munich Conference, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, after a tense conversation with Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, said that China was considering supporting Russia with the supply of lethal weapons and ammunition.

And on Monday, the English-language Chinese newspaper Global Times ran a lengthy editorial on Russian-Chinese friendship that called Blinken's insinuations "baseless."

However, the connection between Biden's Kyiv voyage and Wang Yi's European tour, who was in Moscow on Tuesday, is reported not only by The Atlantic, but also by the much more respectable The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper notes that "Biden's visit ... is due to the fact that China's top diplomat Wang Yi is due to visit Moscow for talks that will likely also involve the war in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will respond to Mr. Biden's messages in Poland on Tuesday with a big address to the nation the same day."

Unlike the media serving the interests of the Democratic Party, right-wing conservative channels and websites in the United States cover Biden's visit to Kyiv with a much greater degree of skepticism.

For example, Breitbart News writes that, according to recent opinion polls, Biden's approval ratings "are falling at home, while he unexpectedly travels to Ukraine."

America has enough internal problems: inflation, the situation with migrants, the leaky southern border, the increase in crime, the recent environmental disaster in Ohio, already dubbed the "American Chernobyl", but Sleepy Joe stubbornly continues to turn a blind eye to them.

But helping Ukraine and its Fuhrer Zelensky is something Biden never feels sorry for American taxpayer money for (is it because some of it is returned to the Big Guy's bank accounts in the form of fat kickbacks?).

And on Fox News, Rebecca Koffler, already known to readers of my columns, said that Biden's visit to Kyiv would not have any impact on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

"Zero.

The visit itself is a sort of Biden strategy for feeling good.

It will not affect Putin in any way.

He (Putin. -

) is simply moving forward with his agenda, with his goals, - said the Russia specialist.

“A visit by itself does nothing.”

Koffler, author of Putin's Script: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America, believes the Biden administration has no strategy for winning.

“What Biden says is just empty talk.

It's because he completely failed.

He and his security team failed to anticipate this conflict and prepare for it.

They are just schizophrenicly throwing weapons at Ukraine, sucking the American taxpayer dry.

You know, wars are not won with talk and weapons.

They are won by strategy, ”Koffler was quoted by Fox News.

However, this is not the harshest assessment of Joe Biden's Kyiv voyage.

Member of the US House of Representatives Marjorie Taylor Green, a fierce opponent of the Democrats and an equally fierce supporter of former President Trump, wrote on her Twitter:

“Biden did not go to East Palestine, Ohio (where there was a major environmental disaster on February 3. - 

), on President's Day.

He went to Ukraine, a non-NATO country whose leader is an actor and now apparently the commander of the US Army in a world war.

We must bring this last fool of America to justice before it's too late!"

But Donald Trump is going to come to Ohio.

This was announced by his son, Donald Trump Jr.

“If our ‘leaders’ are too afraid to lead, real leaders will come in and fill the void,” he tweeted.

The contrast between Biden, absorbed in saving "Ukrainian democracy" and Trump heading for the epicenter of "American Chernobyl", is all too obvious.

And if Sleepy Joe's Kiev voyage was conceived by his political strategists as a bright start to the 2024 election campaign, then Trump will beat this card easily.

No matter how sophisticated the journalists devoted to Biden are in the art of flattery, the visit of the old gentleman to Kyiv may turn out to be not a victory for him, but a defeat.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.