When Alexander Kamyshin, has finished his job of moving VIPs he may be the ideal candidate for head of
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/24/how-ukraine-railways-keeps-people-and-presidents-moving‘Rail Force One’: how Ukraine railways got Joe Biden safely to Kyiv
Alexander Kamyshin, head of the service, doesn’t get much sleep, but his team coordinated the president’s visit without a single leak
Alexander Kamyshin, the head of Ukraine’s railway company Ukrzaliznytsia, doesn’t get much sleep at the best of times. On Sunday night, as Joe Biden was being ferried into Ukraine in a 10-hour night journey from Poland – in a carriage now known as “Rail Force One”, he got almost none.
Along with others involved in the secret operation to bring the US president to his meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Kamyshin watched the progress of the train in a command centre.
A handsome bearded man sporting a hipster-ish braid of hair that falls over the shaved sides of his head, Kamyshin is deliberately vague about many of the details.
But in the past year, his dedicated team has brought in world leaders, VIPs and diplomatic missions on an almost daily basis as part of a programme called “Iron Diplomacy”.
Security is everything, he told the Guardian in an interview at Kyiv’s main railway station. “We have not had one leak. There have been no photographs from train attendants. We respect the confidence of the delegations.
“It’s not a challenge. It’s our job that we do every day. Imagine,” he says with smile, “the president of the United States coming to a war-torn country by train.
“The challenge is treat the delegations properly because, like Biden, they spend more time on the train than they do in Kyiv. He spent 20 hours on the train and four hours in Kyiv. Everyone knows Ukrainians are brave. We also want them to know that we are welcoming.” ...
