Mr Shapps; again! (the next Dr Who?)

 

The BBC reports today that the dear, exalted prick, (the Right Honourable Member) Grant Shapps, had to rearrange his trip to Ukraine on 6/7th March. He flew via his private jet G-ZABH,
(The one the RAF refer to as the "Royal Flight".) from Northolt to Poland
where he took a train to Kiev. The plan then was to, presumably, take another train from Kiev to Odessa
According to the BBC reports (and those from various newsprint wasters such as the Times), Shapp's plan was for a gallivant to Odessa.

And this is where the story starts to look a bit iffy.

He left UK for Poland on 6th March at 15:18 GMT (see below); from Northolt,  arriving in Poland approx 17:30 GMT.
Presumably, he would have been carrying Tesco bags, stuffed with your hard earned cash, for transfer to Zelensky's back pockets.
Well, things were not going well for Zelensky that day (6th March). He was in Odessa, meeting with the Greek Prime Minister.
According to Russian sources, Zelensky had been awarding members of the Ukraine Special Forces, in particular those who had had a hand in destroying the Russian ship in the Black Sea recently.
At 08:40 GMT, the Russians launched an Iskander missile at the base that Zelensky had been visiting. Basically, Zelensky had given the game away, alerting the Russians to where this base was located. Rumour has it that UK had officers there, controlling some of the UK weapons, planning etc. It would make sense for UK officers to be in the region; who else was Shapps going to use as props for his planned photo-op the following day? The same rumours claimed there was a lot of evacuation flights out of the area.

Let's have a bit of a time line here:
6 March, Ukrainian video on internet shows Zelensky's motorcade travelling through
Odessa to the awards ceremony.
6 March 08:40 GMT Russia launched an Iskander strike at Odessa, destroying the base.
Presumably, a loud bang had been noticed in Odessa when Shapps left Northolt 7 hours later?
Undeterred, our hero pressed on and took a train from Rzeszow air base to Kiev, arriving in Kiev the following day, 7th March.
The train service is currently slated to take 14 hours. If the train left Poland at 18:00 (his flight had arrived at 17:30) he could have arrived in Kiev at 06:00 (Polish border disputes notwithstanding).
Time for a wash and brush up, potty time etc and he decided to head home. The earliest he could have arrived at the Polish air base would have been 21:00. Hmmm. He was on a plane at Lublin in time for a  14:57 departure. How did he do that? Perhaps he had morfed into Dr Who.
If he had caught the dark o'clock connecting service from Kiev to Odessa, he would have arrived some 9 hours later. A slow but cheap service (£3-8)! But he didn't. According to the story, he decided to cancel Odessa and return whence he came. Oh dear! Another tiring 14 hour trip back to Poland, this time to Lublin. So, he set off for a visit to Odessa which was under Russian fire the previous day then waited until he had arrived in Kiev to decide it was dangerous. A jolly junket for the aviation mad Shapps.

RAF Falcon 900 G-ZABH flew to Rzeszow air base in Poland, departing Northolt 6th March 15:18 GMT, arriving in Poland approx 17:30 GMT.
Departed Poland approx 18:25 (less than 1 hour on ground), returned to Northolt, arriving approx 20:33.

The other Falcon of this pair, G-ZAHS, left Northolt 8th March at 11:40 GMT for Lublin, Poland.
Arrived Lublin at 13:59 GMT and departed for Northolt at 14:57 GMT, arriving back there at 17:10 GMT.