How Justin Trudeau's people arranged his whirlwind visit to a Ukraine at war

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau surprised a lot of people with his unannounced weekend visit to Ukraine for an in-person meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

While government officials managed to keep the trip a secret, it still took weeks of planning, according to multiple senior Canadian government sources who told CBC News how it all came together.

CBC News is not naming the sources because they are not authorized to speak publicly about these matters.

The sources said Trudeau told his staff he wanted to go to Ukraine to show solidarity with the country and its people as they continue to defy the odds against invading Russian forces. Trudeau also said he wanted to see the devastation wrought by Russia with his own eyes.

Canada's absence from Ukraine had been noted within the diplomatic community. After many other western leaders made the dangerous trek into the war zone in recent weeks, pressure was mounting on Canada to make a gesture of its own.

To prepare for a possible trip, staff in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) reached out to international counterparts who had completed similar trips to find out what those experiences had been like.

The sources said PMO contacted staff members in the offices of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Von der Leyen was one of the first European leaders to visit Ukraine after the invasion; she travelled to Kyiv for a meeting with President Zelensky on April 8. She also toured a mass grave site in the suburb of Bucha, where investigators continue to collect evidence of alleged Russian war crimes.

Prime Minister Johnson visited Kyiv for an-in person meeting with President Zelensky on April 9.

The sources said that, based on those conversations, PMO officials identified two key factors they would have to become comfortable with before planning the prime minister's trip to Ukraine.

The first factor was security: even though Trudeau would travel with his security detail, the entire delegation would be in the hands of the Ukrainian military.

The second had to do with secrecy, or the lack of it: once Trudeau arrived in Ukraine, it would no longer be possible to keep the trip confidential.

The routine practice for planning a world leader's visit to a dangerous location is to keep the trip a secret until the leader has left that high-risk environment.

For example, as U.S. president, Donald Trump made a surprise visit to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan for Thanksgiving in 2019. Journalists were required to keep the trip confidential to protect Trump.