When a U.S. military aircraft landed on the tarmac in Rzeszow, Poland, on Tuesday, the plane crew thought they were picking up the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and a few high-level Ukrainian officials.
What they didn't know, until they saw him exit a U.S. vehicle, was that one of those officials was Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who with American help had just completed a dangerous trip from Bakhmut - the site of some of the war's bloodiest fighting, more than 400 miles from Kyiv - to the Polish border for a covertly planned visit to Washington.