On Monday, President Joe Biden visited the Capitol City of Ukraine during a surprise visit.
During Biden’s trip, air raid sirens were heard multiple times, leading the media and Democrats to praise Biden for his “courage” for visiting a war zone.
Alex Marquardt, a senior national security correspondent at CNN, pointed out something interesting. According to Marquardt, life is realitvely normal and that in the days leading up to Biden’s trip, air raid sirens never went off. The sirens didn’t go off until Biden was in the center of Kyiv.
“The fact is life is relatively normal here in the capital these days. The fighting, of course, taking place hundreds of miles from here in the east and in the south,” Marquardt said.
“I’ve been here for the past five days. I have not heard any explosions. I have not heard any air sirens until about half an hour ago, right when President Biden was in the center of Kyiv,” he added.
The media tried to present Biden as this strong figure who visited a war zone while air raid sirens were going off. But according to those on the ground, there were no missiles flying and Biden was never in any danger.
Following Biden’s trip details began to emerge on how Biden was able to pull off this surprise trip. The Guardian noted that this trip was planned over several months by a small group of key advisers.
National security adviser, Jake Sullivan, described the trip as “unprecedented in modern times” for a President to visit “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”, Sullivan told reporters on Monday.