ac 360 starts now. good evening. president biden is in poland tonight after making a surprise and history-making journey to kyiv on this president s day. after months of secret planning and elaborate preparation, the united states met with ukraine s president just four days short of a year since russian forces invaded. and with reminders of the continuing threat surrounding the two leaders. [ siren ] many american presidents have made dramatic trips before, nixon to china, kennedy, reagan to is the berlin wall, and presidents have visited u.s. troops in war zones, but never like this. this was the first trip ever by an american president would into a war zone without the protection of u.s. troops on the ground or american warplanes patrolling the space overhead. american air assets were active on ukraine s border and moscow was told about it in advance. as for the president s own message, here is some of what he had to say. it was one year ago in week that we spoke on t
was told about it in advance. as for the president s own message, here is some of what he had to say. it was one year ago in week that we spoke on the telephone, president. it was very late in washington, very early in the morning here in kyiv. russian planes were in the air and tanks were rolling across your border. you told me that you could hear the explosions in the ground. one year later, kyiv stands, and ukraine stands. democracy stands. america stands with you, and the world stands with you. in more concrete terms, the president announced another round of military aid to ukraine, but not the f-16 fighters and the longer range battlefield rockets kyiv was seeking. but still, a message that mr. biden certainly underscored. putin thought ukraine was
weak and the west was divided. but he has just been plain wrong. plain wrong. and one year later, the evidence is right here in this room. his journey to that room began late last year when he organized a team of white house, pentagon, and secret service officials to plan for it. the actual trip started at 4:15 yesterday morning. using a small 757 as air force instead of the larger one normally used for overseas travel. with him just two reporters who had to hand over electronic devices after a fueling stop in germany, the president continued to poland where he boarded a train for a ten-hour overnight run to kyiv. this is a photo of the president and national security adviser jake sullivan. the entourage arrived to a city that had been locked down with no explanation, only hints and speculation that something important was about to happen. and it did. a little more than five hours later, president biden was back on the train. then later back on the smaller air force one headed to war
but they were contributing to the security too. and the more people you tell, the morris:00 you take. so that circumference of people who know what s going on has to be as small as possible to mitigate the risk. jonathan, there are so many vulnerable points along the way. obviously not just being in kyiv itself. you heard air raid sirens going off. but that train ride, ten hours is a long time to be in a well, we re not in one spot, but one train compartment on a track that everybody knows which way it goes, and everybody knows which way you have to use to exit the country. yeah. i mean, listen, from the secret service standpoint, that train is one point of the deadly diamond. you know there is one way in and one way out that you re going bring these dignitaries. i want to bring up a point that the general had raised. the secret service worked with the u.s. intelligence and the u.s. state department services to coordinate support with trusted counterparts on the ground. and i thi
russia can allegedly strike ukraine anywhere, at any point. there you have the u.s. president in kyiv visiting volodymyr zelenskyy. that certainly is something that is seen as very critical but a lot of these hard-liners. but in general, you can really see this all over the place on all russian media throughout the entire course of the day. obviously the russian versus critical of that visit, anderson. and do you know if there will be any changes made to vladimir putin s speech tomorrow as a result of the trip? will he talk than? so that s the big question that a lot of people are asking. there are some who believe that at least some of the contours might be a little different, or at least that vladimir putin was watching and might change a few details. one of the things that we heard from the kremlin earlier today is that vladimir putin was putting the finishing touches, the final touches on that speech throughout the better part of the day. and so he will obviously have seen that