Kyiv: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida arrived in Ukraine’s national capital Kyiv for a surprise visit shortly after noon Tuesday. According to Japanese media, NHK News, the Prime Minister was scheduled to return to Japan on Tuesday but instead, he chose to head to the war-torn nation.
The media outlet claimed that the Prime Minister landed in neighbouring Poland and then boarded a train for Ukraine at around 1:30 pm. He is scheduled to meet his Ukrainian excellency Volodymyr Zelenskyy where he will discuss the Russian aggression and other aspects including Japanese aid.
As per NHK, since the end of World War Two, a Japanese prime minister has never visited a country or territory where combat was taking place.
Notably, the surprise visit came the very next day when Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Moscow with his most touted Ukraine peace plan.
Xi’s trip — his first abroad since his re-election earlier this month — showed off Beijing’s new diplomatic swagger and gave a political lift to Putin just days after an international arrest warrant was issued for the Kremlin leader on war crimes charges related to Ukraine.