US President Joe Biden by all accounts was having a quiet weekend at the White House, joining his wife Jill Biden for dinner at a restaurant on a rare outing in Washington on Saturday.
But behind the scenes, officials at the White House and other agencies were planning intensively for the president to make an unannounced trip to Kyiv to show solidarity with Ukraine days before the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion.
The visit began in the dead of night at a military airport hangar outside Washington.
At 4am local time on Sunday - unbeknown to the world's media, the Washington political establishment or American voters - the 80-year-old Democrat boarded an Air Force Boeing 757, known as a C-32.
The plane, a smaller version of the one US presidents normally use on international trips, was parked well away from where Mr Biden would usually board.
And a telling detail: the shade on every window had been pulled down.
Fifteen minutes later, Mr Biden, a handful of security personnel, a small medical team, close advisers, and two journalists who had been sworn to secrecy, took off en route to a war zone.
The US president is perhaps the most constantly scrutinised person on the planet.
Members of the press follow Mr Biden wherever he goes - whether to church or international summits.
Every word he says in public is recorded, transcribed and published.
In this case, though, the usual pool of reporters, which for foreign trips would compromise 13 journalists from radio, TV, photo and written press organisations, was cut to one photographer and one writer.
The reporter, Sabrina Siddiqui from The Wall Street Journal, revealed - once allowed by the White House to publish details - that she and the photographer were summoned to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington at 2.15 am.
Their phones were confiscated - not to be returned until Biden finally arrived in the Ukrainian capital about 24 hours later.
They flew for about seven hours from Washington to the US military base in Ramstein, Germany, for refuelling. Here too, the window shades stayed down and they did not leave the plane.
The next flight was to Poland, landing in Rzeszow-Jasionka Airport. This may be a Polish airport, but since the Ukraine war it has also become an international hub for the US-led effort to arm the Ukrainians, funnelling billions of dollars of weaponry and ammunition.
Up to this point, Ms Siddiqui and the photographer, the Associated Press' Evan Vucci, had not seen Mr Biden himself. That didn't change at the airport or when they got into a motorcade of SUVs.
Reporters travelling with Mr Biden often go in motorcades, but something was very different about this one: no sirens or anything else to announce that the US president was headed to Przemysl Glowny - the Polish train station near the Ukrainian border.
It was already 9.15pm local time as they pulled up at a train. The journalists were told to board, still without laying eyes on Mr Biden.
Running a route that has brought untold quantities of aid into Ukraine and untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians fleeing the other way, the train had about eight cars. Most of the people aboard, Ms Siddiqui said, were "heavy security."
Mr Biden is an avowed train buff.
He loves recounting his years of commuting by rail between Washington and home in Delaware when he was a senator, bringing up two young sons after their mother died in a car crash. One of his nicknames is "Amtrak Joe".
This ten-hour trip into Ukraine, though, was unlike any taken by a modern US president - journeying into an active war zone where, unlike presidential visits to Afghanistan or Iraq, US troops are not the ones providing security.
The train rolled into Kyiv with the rising sun and came to a stop at the Kyiv-Pasazhyrsky station in the Ukrainian capital at roughly 8am local time.
The area around the platform had been cleared and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Bridget Brink, awaited Mr Biden and his staff.
"It's good to be back in Kyiv," Mr Biden, who had last visited the Ukrainian capital when he was vice president under Barack Obama, said after stepping off the train at about 8.07am local time.
Kyiv has captured a part of my heart.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 20, 2023
I knew I would be back. pic.twitter.com/5HYcoEL47Y
The White House also revealed that direct contact was made with Moscow just before Mr Biden arrived - presumably in the form of a stern warning.
"We did notify the Russians that President Biden will be traveling to Kyiv. We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes," National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.
"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."
The White House said full details will be released later, but Mr Sullivan said the mere fact of making the trip was "historic".
US presidents have visited danger zones before - notably Afghanistan and Iraq during the US-led wars there. However, in those cases, the presidents flew into enormous bases already controlled by the US military.
This was a "historic visit, unprecedented in modern times" into a country at war where there are no US forces on the ground, said Mr Sullivan - one of the few aides accompanying Mr Biden.
President Zelenskyy and all Ukrainians remind the world every day what courage is.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 20, 2023
They remind us that freedom is priceless.
And worth fighting for.
For as long as it takes. pic.twitter.com/GlBT0Sg9ZL
After his visit, Mr Biden got back on the train for the trip to Przemysl. After arriving there, he made his way to Warsaw.
By the time Americans woke up to the news that he had been in Ukraine, Mr Biden was already tweeting: "Kyiv has captured a part of my heart."
