tonight with the context. from edinburgh, alex massie scotland editor of the spectator. bill browder, the ceo of hermitage capital management and long time critic of vladimir putin. and joel rubin, who served in the obama administration as assistant to the secretary of state. welcome to the programme. whenjoe biden spoke to vladimir zelensky on this day last year, there wasn t much confidence in washington he would be president for much longer, nor indeed that kyiv could be defended. yet here we are, a year on and not only is zelensky still there, but the us president was today standing alongside him, in kyiv. plans that involved extraordinary subterfuge and secrecy. on sunday night, as is usual, the white house issued the president s public schedule for monday, on which we were told he was leaving for warsaw at 7pm tonight. in fact, he was already in poland. air force one took off at 4:15 sunday morning, the press pool was left behind. and by late evening, the president was
are people on the defence department, state, secret service, are tracking this idea, making this are tracking this idea, making this a secret visit around this time, and it never late. there was no bluster coming out of the white house, there was no bravado about he s going to go until a war zone which, remember, this is a president going into an act of war zone that the united states is not a direct participant income and probally don t have a major military presence, unlike baghdad and kabul, where presidents can go for a holiday visit. this is a real war zone, and can go for a holiday visit. this is a realwarzone, and so can go for a holiday visit. this is a real war zone, and so for a couple of months, planning, known you can, then out in the dark of night. a really incredible feats of operational security and secrecy. there is no precedent for something like this, an american president going to a halt wasn t for us troops are not sufficient. what i think is extraordinary is that t