To commemorate a year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden clandestinely crossed the Atlantic and then took a nine-hour night train from eastern Poland to Kyiv. It was the triumph of Biden’s presidency, to date.

Not in this century, or in the last, has there been an American presidential journey to compare with that undertaken this week by the 80-year-old United States president. Since President Abraham Lincoln rode to watch his army in battle in the Civil War, no American leader has entered combat territory not controlled by US forces or those of their allies. Equally astounding was the announcement from Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, made as the president made his long return train journey to the Polish border,  that Russian President Vladimir Putin had been made aware of Biden’s visit just before it took place, although Sullivan did not disclose how this information was transmitted and in what detail.

Biden left the White House through a side door in the early hours of last Sunday morning. He did not board Air Force One, but joined a skeleton staff of advisors, Secret Service agents, and just two journalists sworn to secrecy and forced to relinquish their phones  on board a US Air Force C-32, an aircraft normally used for domestic flights. The flight landed at Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland at 7:57 p.m. Sunday. From there, the president and his retinue were driven an hour to a Ukraine border town and the waiting train ­— the same as that travelled on by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when he visited Kyiv. Although air raid sirens wailed in Kyiv, not a single Russian attack was made on the Ukrainian capital during Biden’s visit, and all went according to the plan hatched out over many months.

As the week progressed, other moves on the global geopolitical chess board occupied the American president and his senior advisors, making it difficult to predict the outcome of the war in Ukraine. First came a comment from China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, warning Western countries against fuelling the fire of war in Ukraine. Wang Yi, China’s most senior diplomat, fresh from the Munich Security Conference, arrived in Moscow later in the day armed with Beijing’s peace plan for Ukraine. The plan forms part of China’s proposed Global Initiative, which seeks to challenge an American-NATO-led world order by creating an alternative defence framework. Wang, it seems, has been preparing the ground for an official visit to Moscow by China’s President Xi Jinping in coming months.

Of greater significance to Biden and the West was the grenade Putin threw into any hope of peace. In his long-delayed State of the Nation address to the Russian people on Tuesday, Putin was uncompromising. His address was a mixture of nationalism, self-delusion, and bravado. Incredibly, he claimed the United States started the conflict in Ukraine. Putin announced the suspension of Moscow’s participation in the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction) Treaty.  The 2010 treaty limits the number of Russian and American-deployed strategic long-range nuclear weapons and warheads and imposes an inspection and notification regime. It is the last remaining arms control agreement between Moscow and Washington after Donald Trump pulled out of an intermediate-range weapons agreement in 2018, citing Russian violations.

Putin warned that Russia is ready to resume nuclear tests if the US were to do so, but stated, “We will not do this first.”  However, with an estimated 6000 nuclear warheads, the largest stockpile in the world, Putin’s action poses a real threat to Russia’s European neighbours, and may well trigger a new arms race.

The reaction to all this from Biden, by now in Warsaw for meetings with Polish President Andrzej Duda, was brisk. “Putin thought NATO would fracture, but NATO is more united than ever before’’ he told a crowd in the gardens of the Royal Castle.

So, what should we make of all this? The first thing to be said is that Biden’s visit to Kyiv was not, as cynics suggest, pure theatre. No American president makes such a journey, with that degree of risk, without a real purpose. From the day he moved into the White House, Biden’s focus has been to safeguard and promote democracy. The five hours he spent in Kyiv, side-by-side with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was a television spectacle designed not only to provide reassurance to Ukrainians that the US would continue and enhance its support, but to remind Americans that they too must face up to a long and costly battle for democratic freedom.

When will this war end?  Probably not soon. Most Americans, Europeans, and Australians no doubt think the war has only just entered its second year, but in reality it is nine years since Putin annexed Crimea, Ukrainian sovereign territory, in 2014. The Crimean peninsula, astride the north coast of the Black Sea, was an economic and defensive lifeline for Ukraine before it was annexed. Many Europeans have only just woken up to the fact that while Crimea remains in Russian hands, NATO’s task in defending Europe will remain more difficult and much more expensive. Retaking Crimea is the major reason Zelensky needs fighter jets and long-range missiles. For this reason, he is unlikely to be prepared under any circumstances to allow the Kremlin to keep the territory in any peace negotiation. At the same time, Putin will not be willing give it up.

As he returned to Washington, Biden had another big concern on his mind. Looking down on the island of Ireland, he could see two countries at peace since the Good Friday Agreement, signed on 10 April 1998, and must have wondered whether “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland were about to begin all over again.

Like many of us, Biden would have hoped that while he was in Poland, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would pull off the complicated deal he had been negotiating with the European Commission and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. For months, the DUP has blocked the election of a Speaker to Stormont, the Northern Irish seat of government, because it objected to the European Court of Justice having the final say on the operation of the EU Single Market for goods.

Colin Chapman FAIIA is editor-at-large of Australian Outlook and a fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He was president of AIIA New South Wales. Colin is a writer, broadcaster, and public speaker who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He has held executive positions at the BBC and Financial Times.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.