Ukraine war latest: Japanese PM visits Kyiv; US to speed up Patriot, Abrams delivery

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida vowed that his country would help Ukraine “with the greatest effort to regain peace” during a visit to Kyiv on March 21.

Kishida’s visit to Kyiv occurred as Chinese leader Xi Jinping was visiting Moscow.

Kishida is the first Japanese prime minister to visit a war zone since World War II. Before him, Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister, visited Kyiv in 2015, when Russia’s war was already on in eastern Ukraine but hadn’t reached the capital yet.

Kishida arrived in Kyiv in the afternoon on March 21, after his India visit. He is the last G7 leader to travel to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

After touring Bucha, a Kyiv suburb where local authorities say more than 400 civilians were indiscriminately killed during the weeks-long Russian occupation in 2022, Kishida held talks with Zelensky in Kyiv.

At a joint news conference, Kishida said Japan would provide $30 million for Ukraine’s non-lethal weapon purchases through the NATO trust fund, as well as $470 million in grant aid for the country's energy sector and other industries.

"It is symbolic that the prime minister is making his first visit to Ukraine today, on the anniversary of the beginning of the liberation of Ukrainian territories,” Zelensky said, referring to how Ukrainian forces liberated the village of Moshchun, near Bucha, on March 21, 2022.

“And he started it from Bucha. We appreciate it very much," Zelensky said of Kishida, whom he hailed as “a truly powerful defender of the international order and a longtime friend of Ukraine.”

Kishida’s surprise visit came a few months before the upcoming Group of Seven (G7) summit in the Japanese city of Hiroshima in May. Kishida, who received an invitation from Zelensky in January during a phone call, had been facing pressure from the opposition party to visit Kyiv before the summit.

Kishida has “strongly condemned” the Kremlin multiple times, but his country, which holds a longstanding territorial dispute with Russia over islands of the Kuril chain, has not provided any weapons to Ukraine.

Japan has thus far sent non-lethal equipment, such as bulletproof vests, to Ukraine. Japan allows arms exports only to the countries that co-produce weapons with Japan. Since November, the country has been considering easing the restriction.

The government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have offered to add more countries to the list of nations eligible for arms exports, such as those attacked by another state, but it has not been set in motion yet.

“The summit in May will provide an opportunity for Tokyo to flex its diplomatic muscle and announce that all G7 nations will continue to support Kyiv,” Nikkei Asia wrote.

Zelensky accepted Kishida’s invitation to attend the summit virtually.