Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa is in Kyiv on Sunday (January 7th) for a visit intended to show that Tokyo is "determined" to continue helping Ukraine against Russia, after almost two years of war.
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Yoko Kamikawa, the first high-ranking foreign official to visit Ukraine this year, held talks with her counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and visited Bucha and Irpin, two cities near Kyiv that have been the scene of atrocities blamed on the Russian army.
Tokyo unlocks $37 million
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Japan is committed to supporting Ukraine to bring peace to the country," the Japanese minister said at a joint press conference held at an air-raid shelter as a safety precaution. "Based on the results of my visit, Japan will continue to strengthen cooperation with Ukraine," she added. In particular, she said that Tokyo had released $37 million (about €33.8 million) to provide a drone detection system to Ukraine.
Dmytro Kuleba said he had told his counterpart that Ukraine needed not only F-16 fighter jets but also new air defense systems to deal with Russian strikes. "Every day, Ukrainian cities are being destroyed by Russian missiles and drones. They can't capture us, so they try to destroy us. They won't succeed," he said.
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According to Dmytro Kuleba, the two ministers also discussed "threats" linked to North Korea, which is accused of supplying weapons and ammunition to Mosu. Before her meeting, Kamikawa visited Bucha, a town near Kyiv that was the scene of a massacre of civilians in 2022 blamed on Russian forces, as well as Irpin, a town where the fighting has been particularly fierce.
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I visited Bucha and saw the still-fresh scars of Russian aggression, and I was shocked by what I saw," she said. The visit was not initially announced in the official schedule of Kamikawa's two-week tour, which included trips to Poland, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Germany and Turkey.
Japan will host a conference in Tokyo in February on promoting Ukraine's economic reconstruction, which Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal plans to attend. Tokyo has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine since early 2022 and is participating in Western sanctions against Moscow.