Prince Harry made a surprise visit to Ukraine. The Duke of Sussex returned to the country on Friday to visit Kyiv for the first time. The royal told The Guardian that he was initially invited to the Ukrainian capital by Olga Rudnieva, the founder and CEO of the Superhumans Trauma Centre in Lviv.
“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," the Duke told The Guardian—though he ran it by his wife Meghan Markle.
Prince Harry said, "I had to check with my wife and the British government to make sure it was OK. Then the official invitation came."
Back in April, the Duke traveled to the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where he visited the Superhumans Trauma Centre. On Friday King Charles' youngest son said, “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.”
According to The Guardian, Harry and a team from his Invictus Games Foundation were set to detail "new initiatives to support the rehabilitation of the wounded, with the eventual aim of providing help to all areas of the country."
“We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process," Harry said while traveling to Kyiv. “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.”
Ukraine participated in the Invictus Games for the first time in 2017 when the sporting event took place in Toronto. The next Invictus Games will be held in Birmingham in 2027. Harry has previously said, "We have no doubt the people of Birmingham will join in celebrating the unwavering respect and admiration we have for our veteran and service community, showing the world how their courage ignites hope and unites us all—something your city knows well."