Sofia’s mama will have a pretty cool story for her one day. For Sabrina Siddiqui, Sofia’s mama and The Wall Street Journal reporter, the story began on Friday when she was summoned to the White House and sworn to secrecy.

She would have hardly been able to believe her ears: US President Joe Biden was about to make a secret trip to Ukraine — part of it on a train in the war-torn country — and she and another journalist summoned with her were to be part of it. Siddiqui and Evan Vucci, from The Associated Press, were told to wait for further information in an email whose subject line would read: “Arrival instructions for the golf tourney.”

Thus began a presidential journey unparalleled in modern US history: in an audacious move meant to demonstrate American resolve to help Ukraine defeat the Russian forces that invaded a year ago this week, Biden was to travel covertly to Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and promise more weapons for the country’s defenders.

In the early hours of Sunday, Biden was spirited out of the White House and taken to Joint Base Andrews in the Maryland suburbs, where a small coterie of aides, security agents, a medical team, a White House photographer and the two journalists awaited him.

The two-person journalism pool was a radical departure from other presidential trips — even the most security-sensitive ones — when the usual complement of 13 reporters and photographers was taken. But it would not be the only unusual feature of the trip.

Never in Biden’s lifetime had a President ventured into a war zone that was not under the control of US forces, much less on a relatively slow-moving locomotive that would take nine-and-a-half hours to reach its destination.

During that time, he was potentially exposed to circumstances beyond the control of the hyper-vigilant security phalanx that normally seeks to shield a commander-in-chief from every conceivable physical danger and minimise his time outside a hardened shelter.

Since Abraham Lincoln rode to the front lines outside Washington to watch battles in Northern Virginia during the Civil War, no sitting President has gotten that close to combat.

Franklin D. Roosevelt visited North Africa; Lyndon B. Johnson went to Vietnam; Bill Clinton toured the Balkans; George W. Bush and Barack Obama travelled to Iraq and Afghanistan; and Donald J. Trump went to Afghanistan.

But they went to countries or areas under control of American forces or after hostilities had eased. In this case, the US military would not be present in Ukraine.

Surreal

As the train rumbled across the Ukrainian countryside through a long night, the view outside the window left little to see, just the occasional streetlight or shadows of buildings in the distance. But neither could those watching the train go by see who was inside, nor would they likely have guessed had they stopped to wonder.

Huddled aboard the anonymous train with Biden was a skeleton team of advisers accompanied by armed and edgy Secret Service agents. As far as the world was concerned, Biden was back in Washington, home for the evening after a date night at an Italian restaurant.

For much of the past year, most of the people around the President had resisted any urge to go, on the assumption that it was too risky. But nearly a year after the Russian invasion, with Ukrainian troops faring far better than anyone expected at the start and other US and European leaders having made the trip, Biden and his team gambled that he could get in and out safely.

“Of course there was still risk, and is still risk, in an endeavour like this,” Jake Sullivan, the President’s national security adviser, told reporters by phone from the train as it departed Kyiv for the return trip to Poland. The journey inside Ukraine was a long and surreal one. This was not how Biden was used to seeing the country. He had visited six times as Vice-President — three times in a six-month stretch — arriving in an American jet, gazing out of the window in daylight to take in the sights of Kyiv from above. Now he was sneaking in under cover of darkness, arriving shortly after sunrise.

Biden’s visit produced an indelible image of the two Presidents striding to a memorial for fallen soldiers in broad daylight even as an airraid siren blared, a show of defiance of Moscow quickly beamed around the world. “I thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about US support for Ukraine in the war,” Biden said during his five hours on the ground in Kyiv before leaving again. He was speaking, in effect, not just to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia but to fellow Americans back home doubting his decision to invest so deeply in Ukraine’s war. “It’s not just about freedom in Ukraine,” he said. “It’s about freedom of democracy at large.”

The trip had been in the works for months, aides said, as just a trusted few officials at the White House, Pentagon, Secret Service and intelligence agencies weighed the threat assessments. In meetings, Biden focused on the risk his visit could pose to others, not himself, one aide said. Finally, the decision came to a head on Friday, when the President gathered with a handful of top advisers in the Oval Office and consulted others by phone. He opted to go. Biden was already set to travel to Poland for the anniversary. Often, when Presidents make secret stops in uncertain locations, the visits are added to the end of a scheduled trip. In this case, the White House decided to put it on the front end in hopes of keeping the secret.

The President played his part in the ruse. On Saturday evening, he and Jill Biden went to Mass at Georgetown University, then stopped by the National Museum of American History and finally went out to dinner at the Red Hen restaurant, where they enjoyed the rigatoni, widely considered the best in Washington. When the couple arrived back at the White House, most people might have assumed they were in for the night.

The journey

Siddiqui and Vucci, arriving at Andrews in the early hours of Sunday, surrendered their phones, not to be returned for 24 hours. They were taken not to the usual blue and white Boeing 747 designated as Air Force One when the President is on board but to an Air Force C-32, more typically used for domestic trips to airports with shorter runways.

The plane was parked in the dark next to a hangar with shades drawn. Biden arrived about 4am, and the plane took off at 4.15am for the flight across the Atlantic. Biden was joined by a handful of aides —Sullivan; Jen O’Malley Dillon, a deputy chief of staff; and Annie Tomasini, director of Oval Office operations.

The plane touched down at Ramstein Air Base in Germany at 5.13pm local time, where, with its shades down, it was refuelled before taking off again at 6.29pm. It then made its way to Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland, landing at 7.57pm.

Biden was put in a motorcade with roughly 20 cars and driven without sirens for about an hour along a mostly empty highway to the small city of Przemyśl and taken to the train station where many thousands of refugees had arrived from Ukraine over the past year. Arriving at 9.15pm, the travellers found few people there and the stalls closed.

The motorcade pulled right up to a mostly purple train, with several cars painted blue with a yellow stripe along the middle to resemble the Ukrainian flag. Rarely does a President ride in any vehicle other than those of the Secret Service or American military, but flying into Ukraine is not deemed safe.

The train pulled away from the station without ceremony at 9.37pm and crossed the border into Ukraine around 10pm. The White House was so intent on keeping the secret that it lied to reporters back in Washington.

About four hours after Biden had crossed the border into Ukraine, his office back in Washington issued a public schedule falsely stating that the President was still in the nation’s capital and not planning to leave for Europe until Monday evening.

Dressed in casual clothes, Biden had a hard time sleeping during the long train ride, according to a senior official who asked not to be identified. Talking with aides, Biden recounted his telephone call with Zelensky on February 24last year as Russia’s invasion began, marvelling about how the Ukrainian leader told him at the time that he was not sure when they would speak again. Now, Biden mused to aides, here they were a year later about to meet face to face in Kyiv.

After the all-night trip, the train pulled into Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky station at 8am local time. The platform had been cleared. On a sunny day with blue skies and a brisk chill in the air, Biden disembarked, now wearing a blue suit with a tie featuring Ukrainian colours. He was greeted by Bridget A. Brink, the American ambassador. “It’s good to be back in Kyiv,” he said.

In a tweet, Siddiqui said: “I was kind of a wreck going into this trip thinking about traveling without my baby girl for the very first time -- and that’s when I thought we were just going to Warsaw! Glad Sofia’s mama will have a pretty cool story for her one day.”