Prince Harry has made a surprise visit to Kyiv following an invitation from the Ukrainian government, vowing to do “everything possible” to aid the recovery of thousands of military personnel seriously injured in the three-year war against Russia.
During the trip, the Duke of Sussex and a team from his Invictus Games Foundation are set to announce new initiatives to support the rehabilitation of the wounded, with the eventual aim of providing help across all regions of the country. Earlier this year, it was estimated that the war had already left 130,000 people with permanent disabilities, and the Ukrainian government has now placed rehabilitation through sport at the heart of its veteran policy.
Speaking to the Guardian on an overnight train to the capital, Prince Harry said: “We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process.” He added: “We can continue to humanise the people involved in this war and what they are going through. 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.”
The prince explained that he was initially invited by Olga Rudnieva, founder and CEO of the Superhumans Trauma Centre in Lviv, which treats wounded amputees. He visited the centre in April and met her by chance in New York a couple of months ago. “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.”
Ukraine first participated in the Invictus Games in 2017, but enthusiasm and need for the competition, founded by Prince Harry in 2014 for wounded veterans, have grown dramatically since the conflict with Russia began. During his visit, the prince is due to visit the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War and meet with 200 veterans, as well as the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.
