THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
March 2, 2022 at 17:21 JST
The Foreign Ministry (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
With the situation in the Ukrainian capital rapidly worsening, the Foreign Ministry announced on March 2 that it would temporarily close the Japanese Embassy in Kyiv by day's end and relocate it to a safer city.
The ministry says the relocation from Kyiv to Lviv in the western part of Ukraine is due to Russia’s continuing invasion into the country.
It says that the embassy will continue operating in the new location to secure the safety of Japanese living in Ukraine and assist them in evacuating from the country.
The embassy in Kyiv had already scaled down its operations and many of its officials have been performing their duties, including ensuring the safety of Japanese in the country, at its temporary contact center in Lviv.
However, because many of the Japanese living in Ukraine, which totaled around 120 as of Feb. 27, are still in Kyiv, a small number of officials had continued working at the embassy in the capital even after the start of the Russian invasion.
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