Japan PM pledges $5.5 billion in additional Ukraine aid

• Japan to aid $5.5 billion to Ukraine.
• Japanese prime minister will host a G7 video conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• The G7 leaders will meet in person in May in Hiroshima.

Japan will provide Ukraine with $5.5 billion in new financial assistance, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Monday, just days before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion.

When the war began on February 24, 2022, Japan, this year’s Group of Seven presidents, joined Western nations in putting sanctions on Moscow.

According to the prime minister’s office, it has already offered Ukraine $600 million in financial help as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency humanitarian assistance.

But “there is still a need to assist people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the war, and to restore destroyed infrastructure”, Kishida said in a speech at a think tank symposium in Tokyo.

“We have decided to provide additional financial support of $5.5 billion.”

The Japanese prime minister also stated that he will host a G7 video conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the invasion.

Non-permanent member of the UN Security Council

“This year, Japan, as G7 president and a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, will support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression and lead the world’s efforts to uphold a free and open international order based on the rule of law,” Kishida said.

The G7 leaders will meet in person in May in Hiroshima.

Japan has also taken the unusual step of supplying defensive equipment and extending asylum to refugees fleeing the fighting since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion.

The country has a post-war pacifist constitution that restricts its military power to presumably defensive measures.

Kishida’s remarks came as US Vice President Joseph Biden promised expanded weaponry deliveries to Ukraine during an unexpected visit to Kyiv.

It is Biden’s first visit to Ukraine since the war began, and the trip was greeted by Zelensky as “an extraordinarily important expression of support for all Ukrainians”.

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