Prince Harry makes surprise visit to Ukraine

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London: Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Ukraine in a show of support for the country as it calls on Western leaders to offer more military aid to shoot down Russian drones and missiles during nightly attacks on civilian targets.

Harry arrived in Kyiv after clearing his visit with the British government – and his wife, Meghan – to join colleagues from the Invictus Games Foundation, the charity he set up to help defence personnel who suffer serious wounds in the line of duty.

Prince Harry arrives at a central railway station in Kyiv on Friday.

He is due to meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko, as she calls on world leaders to pile more economic pressure on Russia after a strike on a government building in Kyiv earlier this week and a glide bomb attack that killed 24 pensioners in eastern Ukraine.

Harry arrived in Kyiv on Friday morning (late afternoon AEST) in his second visit to Ukraine this year, after he visited Lviv in April to tour a medical charity that helps Ukrainian soldiers recover from major injuries including the loss of limbs.

“We cannot stop the war, but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process,” Harry told The Guardian on an overnight train to Kyiv.

Prince Harry is greeted on his arrival in Kyiv.

He was invited to the capital by the Ukrainian government, he said, and received permission from the British government and his wife before travelling.

The trip comes at the end of Harry’s four-day visit to Britain from his home in California, where he lives with his wife and their two children.

British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also arrived in Ukraine, after her move into the portfolio last weekend, and so did Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, days after a NATO emergency in response to Russian drones in Polish airspace.

Britain launched a new package of Russia-related sanctions on Friday, targeting ships carrying Russian oil, as well as companies and individuals supplying electronics, chemicals and explosives used to make Russian weapons.

The package was a response to recent Russian aggression, the British government said, referring to the higher numbers of Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine in recent months, and the violation of NATO airspace over Poland.

With Reuters