Before the ceremony and the serious meetings about war, the European leaders witnessed the devastation wrought by Russia. A must. To understand Ukraine's fight for survival, they had to see it themselves, with their own eyes.
The blown up buildings. The smashed cars. And a message of hope spray-painted on a damaged building despite mounting Ukrainian deaths.
French President Emmanuel Macron spotted it immediately amid the ruins Thursday.
"Look at that, Make Europe, not war,'" Macron said, pointing and reading the words out loud in English. "It's very moving to see that."
The leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Romania had a walking tour of Irpin, a small city which bore the full brunt of Russia's failed assault on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in the first weeks of the war.
The tour preceded a meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met them wearing army green pants, a matching T-shirt and sneakers.
If the four hadn't fully grasped the scale of the horrors inflicted by the Russian invasion, ravages like the ones visited across much of Europe during World War I and World War II, then Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Premier Mario Draghi and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis have no excuses now.
The leaders travelled by overnight train to the Ukrainian capital because flights aren't possible in the wartime airspace where missiles, drones, fighter jets and helicopters have rained down death and destruction.
Iohannis, whose country has been a key destination for Ukrainian refugees, travelled separately from the others.