Meloni’s long night towards Kiev: Biden’s vain wait, the last cigarette before leaving

Car number one, on a track in the middle of nowhere on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Giorgia Meloni tightens her coat. Smoke. She coughs, and she still smokes. Above the first step, the symbol of the glorious Ukrainian railways which have been resisting the invader for three hundred and sixty-two days. The roadmap has already jumped, it’s late at night. Arrival in Kiev is expected in the late morning. In between, ten hours of rails and snowflakes. Przemysl station is at odds with nothing. Everything has already been seen, like in a film: the leaders take turns in power and pay homage to Volodymyr Zelensky’s battle, the Polish train conductor, the tired Ukrainian customs agent, the blinds on the windows of the carriages for safety reasons, the cold, dark. So dark.

Even the yellow and blue of the sheet metal of the locomotive is sucked into the night. The train swings, we leave for the capital. The delay will complicate Meloni’s agenda this morning. But the goal is to reach the black hole of Ukrainian pain in Bucha, perhaps even in Irpin. Then the leader will speak to the press together with Volodymyr Zelensky. Arms, aid, reconstruction. And a great, great desire to explain that no, Berlusconi and Salvini say things about Putin that you really don’t agree with.

It is not Mario Draghi’s train, which traveled with Europe, on the contrary: which brought Europe to Kiev. There is no Emmanuel Macron and not even Olaf Scholz. There is no unity, or rather: there is no Italy, it remained outside the door of the Elysée, while France, Germany and the actor who became a hero of the resistance in the Kremlin dined inside. If anything there is Joe Biden, who hovers. For the whole day he covers the visit of the premier, visits Kiev, returns to Poland. Meloni chases him, tries to make contact, waits for him for an hour under the ladder of the Thirty-first Wing’s Airbus, he would like a photo to seal the political investment which can be summarized as follows: Poland and the United States, Visegrad and Washington, East and West , the important thing is to stay away from “the Brussels bureaucracy”. Eventually he gets a phone call and a promise of an invitation to the White House.

The train is stopped now. It’s nearly two o’clock. Passport control, then off we go again. Towards Zelensky, the Presidential Palace. Waiting to understand when and how much Russia will react to Biden’s visit. To weigh the reaction of the Tsar on the anniversary of the year of the invasion, which falls in two days. Weather: Snow is expected in Kiev.