Prince Harry makes surprise visit to Kyiv as he pledges help for thousands injured in Ukraine war

Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Kyiv as part of his work for the Invictus Games and to support Ukraine’s tens of thousands of injured veterans.

The Duke of Sussex flew to Poland and then caught a train to the Ukrainian capital, arriving on Friday morning.

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 admitted 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 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.’

During the Kyiv trip he will head to the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, meet hundreds of veterans and also sit down with the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko. 

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.

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.

Prince Harry ‘loved’ being back in the UK and ‘catching up with old friends’ this week, his aide revealed.

Concluding his four-day trip with an event to highlight The Diana Award, yesterday a spokesman for the Duke of Sussex suggested he saw it as a success.

On Wednesday night the prodigal prince managed to secure himself a 54-minute meeting with his father, King Charles – the first in 19 months. But his choice of final engagement – a charity both he and his estranged brother, Prince

William, have been involved with over the years – only served to emphasise the gulf that remains between them.

Tessy Ojo, chief executive of The Diana Award, indicated she didn’t expect a joint engagement from them any time soon, saying: ‘You know what, people are fascinated about seeing them together. I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside them for 25 years and they’ve always done things separately.

‘The one time we brought them together was the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death.’

Harry, she said, has been having meetings on a monthly basis over Zoom with Diana Award staff and has been to events in America. It was one of five events packed into what was dubbed a ‘pseudo royal tour’ for the Prince – and one clearly aimed at trying to reset his relationship with the British people.

The icing on the cake, however, was being driven into Clarence House for an almost hour-long meeting with his father. While those in royal circles say it was not a reunion per se, it is being considered a positive step forward.

There is no suggestion of any such thawing in relations with his brother, who had borne the brunt of many of Harry’s most vicious attacks on his family in recent years.

It is not clear whether he has any plans to return to Britain soon.

However, his spokesman strongly suggested he was buoyed by how well he felt this one had gone, saying: ‘He’s obviously loved being back in the UK, catching up with old friends and just generally being able to support the incredible causes that mean so much to him.’

Harry spent around an hour yesterday at what appeared to be a specially created event for him, talking to young people about mental health and social action. In an impromptu speech, he spoke about how young people can feel isolated if ‘lost and separated from a group’.

Harry also gave a warm hug to his father’s former press secretary Colleen Harris, who worked for Charles when he was the Prince of Wales, from 1998 until 2003.

She is now a trustee of the King’s Charitable Fund.

Afterwards the Duke headed straight to the airport and now it has emerged that instead of heading back to Los Angeles, he went to Ukraine instead.