The South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yeol, made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Saturday, in an apparent show of support for the country in its war with Russia.
Yoon travelled to Ukraine with his wife, Kim Keon-hee, after trips to Lithuania for a Nato summit and to Poland, his office said. It is his first visit since Russia invaded Ukraine almost 17 months ago.
Yoon toured Bucha and Irpin, a pair of small cities near Kyiv where bodies of civilians were found in the streets and mass graves discovered after Russian troops retreated from the capital region last year. He laid flowers at a monument to the country’s war dead.
The South Korean leader was scheduled to hold talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, later in the day, Yoon’s senior adviser for press affairs, Kim Eun-hye, said.
South Korea, a key US ally in Asia, joined international sanctions against Russia and has provided Ukraine with humanitarian and financial support.
But the Asian nation, a growing arms exporter, has not provided weapons to Ukraine in line with its longstanding policy of not supplying arms to countries actively engaged in conflict.
Earlier this month, Yoon said supplies of demining equipment, ambulances and other non-military materials “are in the works” after a request from Ukraine.
He said South Korea had already provided support to replace the Kakhovka dam, which was destroyed last month. The Russian and Ukrainian governments have accused each other of blowing up the dam, but the evidence suggests Russia had more of a motive to cause deadly flooding, endanger crops and threaten drinking water supplies in a contested part of Ukraine.
“The government of the Republic of Korea is firmly committed to actively joining the United States and other liberal democracies in international efforts to defend the freedom of Ukraine,” Yoon said.
During a visit to South Korea in January, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, called for the country to provide direct military support to Ukraine, saying Kyiv was in urgent need of weapons to fight off the prolonged Russian invasion.
In May, when Yoon met the Ukrainian first lady, Olena Zelenska, in Seoul, the president said he would expand South Korea’s non-lethal aid to Ukraine. Yoon’s spokesperson, Lee Do-woon, said at the time that Zelenska made no request for South Korean weapons supplies during her conversation with Yoon.
Yoon and Zelenskiy met in May on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Zelenskiy thanked South Korea for its humanitarian shipments of medicines, computers and generators and requested additional provisions of non-lethal items.
Yoon and his wife’s visit came two days after Russia launched another barrage of Iranian-made drones at the Kyiv region. Ukrainian officials said their air defences intercepted the drones but that wreckage fell on four districts of the capital, wounding two people and destroying several homes.
2023-07-15 06:01:17
Original from www.theguardian.com
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