Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida will be making an unexpected visit to Kyiv to hold talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Japan’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
Kishida will offer “solidarity and unwavering support” to Ukraine during his visit, according to the ministry.
The Japanese PM was expected to return to Tokyo after his trip to India, but changed his plans to visit Ukraine. Broadcaster NHK showing him boarding a train at the Polish border town of Przemysl.
Ukraine is celebrating the destruction of a shipment of Russian “Kalibr” cruise missiles in Crimea.
The Ukrainian defense ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) said in a release on Monday that an “explosion” took out a number of missiles being transported by rail in the “temporarily occupied” northern Crimea settlement of Dzhankoy.
The release went on to say that the “mysterious” explosion “continues the process of Russia’s demilitarization and prepares the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea for de-occupation.”