970x125
Prince Harry has made a surprising pit-stop in Kyiv, Ukraine, on his way back to the US following a fleeting four-day visit to the UK.
The Duke of Sussex, 40, flew into Poland Friday morning before boarding a train to the Ukrainian capital for a quick visit as part of his work for the Invictus Games.
The visit to Kyiv marks Harry’s first and comes just days after Russia had pounded the city with its largest air strike since the war started in February 2022.
“I had to check with my wife and the British government to make sure it was OK,” the “Spare” author said Friday as he arrived in the war-torn capital.
The duke pledged to do “everything possible” to help thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and service personnel injured in the ongoing, escalating conflict.
“We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process,” he went on.
“We can continue to humanize 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 desensitized to what has been going on.”
The Invictus Games founder is expected to visit the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War where he will meet hundreds of veterans.
Harry — who was invited to Ukraine by Olga Rudnieva, who fronts the Superhumans Trauma Center in Lviv — will also speak with the Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.
Follow The Post’s royal family live blog for the latest pics, news, exclusive details and more
“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,’” Harry told The Guardian.
“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.”
The duke, who served 10 years in the British Army, has made helping injured soldiers one of his most prominent causes.
The trip loosely mirrors his visit in April, when he traveled to Lviv to meet with war victims — his first time setting foot on Ukrainian soil.
There, Harry visited Rudnieva’s Superhumans Center, an orthopedic clinic in Lviv that treats and rehabilitates wounded military personnel and civilians, to see top-notch services provided in a country in the midst of war.
The duke’s surprise Ukraine trip comes just days after he attended a series of charity events in London before briefly reuniting with his estranged father, King Charles, for peace talks.
Harry was seen arriving by car at the king’s London residence, Clarence House, at around 5:20 p.m. local time Wednesday.
The king, for his part, flew from Balmoral in Scotland to London, where he hosted three private audiences — including one with his youngest son.
The father-son duo spoke face-to-face over “private tea,” with their meeting reportedly lasting 55 minutes. It marked their first in-person meeting in 20 months.
Moments after the their so-called peace talks, Harry offered up some rare insight into how his cancer-stricken father is doing.
He is now expected to fly home to Montecito, Calif., to be with his wife, Meghan Markle, and their two children.
