There are journalists meeting him in Russia every now and then. You can hide the precise location from someone when you put them into a car, blindfold and drive

There are journalists meeting him in Russia every now and then. You can hide the precise location from someone when you put them into a car, blindfold and drive them around. You can't hide it any more when you have to ship the journalist to a different continent and back in a matter of hours/minutes. Sure you can put the car into an airplane etc but those can be easily tracked. And I doubt they wouldn't spill the secret if they were aware. Also of course the USA tracks everything that can be tracked using satellites. Everything. The CIA in fact had collected tons of satellite images of the arctic and antarctic and contributed them to the science community to study climate change.