Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Kyiv as part of his work for the Invictus Games.
The Duke of Sussex flew to Poland and then caught a train to the Ukrainian capital.
It is his first visit to Kyiv, which was hit by Russian cruise missiles just two days ago on the same night numerous attack drones from Russia violated Polish airspace and were shot down.
‘I had to check with my wife and the British government to make sure it was OK’, he said today.
Harry, who has enjoyed a successful trip to the UK to support his charities and meet his father King Charles, has declared he will do ‘everything possible’ to help thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and service personnel injured in the three-year war with Russia.
‘We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process’, he said.
‘We can continue to humanise the people involved in this war and what they are going through. We have to keep it in the forefront of people’s minds. I hope this trip will help to bring it home to people because it’s easy to become desensitised to what has been going on.’
Prince Harry, pictured in London yesterday, has made a surprise visit to Kyiv as part of his work for the Invictus Games
Harry with Olga Rudneva, far right, who invited him to Ukraine. They are pictured together at the Invictus Games in Vancouver in February
Harry told The Guardian that he was invited by Olga Rudnieva, the boss of the Superhumans Trauma Centre in Lviv.
He said: ‘I bumped into Olga in New York. It was a chance meeting and I asked her what I could do to help. She said “the biggest impact you have is coming to Kyiv”.
‘I had to check with my wife and the British government to make sure it was OK. Then the official invitation came.
‘In Lviv, you don’t see much of the war. It is so far west. This is the first time we will see the real destruction of the war’.
Harry, who served 10 years in the British Army, has long made helping injured soldiers one of his most prominent causes – founding the Invictus Games in 2014 to offer wounded veterans the chance to compete in sports events similar to the Paralympics.
Ukraine has taken part since 2017 and spoke about how moved he was when he met the team in The Hague two years ago.
He said: ‘It was remarkable. Every one of the participants had a journey to get to those games, but nobody from any of the other competing nations was going back to war. That is why the Ukrainians stood out. Everyone felt an immense connection to them. Some of the competitors were being pulled off the battlefield and were going back to the battlefield. It means so much to us, because it means so much to them’.
In April, Harry met with war victims in his first trip to Ukraine, this time time to Lviv.
Photos showed the royal with a smile ear-to-ear, posing with dozens of wounded soldiers.
One image showed the Duke with a solemn expression as he chatted to a visibly injured youngster.
The visit to the area in western Ukraine, that has frequently been targeted with Russian missiles, was not announced until after Harry was out of the country.
Prince Harry talks with a person wounded in the war with Russia at the Superhumans Center in Lviv in April
Tthe Duke of Sussex (front, centre right) during a visit to Ukraine to meet war victims
The Duke of Sussex during a visit to Ukraine to meet war victims in an unannounced trip
The prince was joined in Ukraine by a contingent from the Invictus Games Foundation, including four veterans who have been through similar rehabilitation experiences.
The centre offers prosthetics, reconstructive surgery and psychological help free of charge.
