Prince Harry arrived in Ukraine on Friday morning for a surprise visit to support the thousands injured in the country's ongoing war with Russia. The Duke of Sussex and the team from his Invictus Games Foundation arrived in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as part of a plan to roll out new initiatives to support the rehabilitation of military personnel who have been seriously wounded in the three-year war. "We cannot stop the war but what we can do is do everything we can to help the recovery process," Harry told The Guardian. "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." The 40-year-old explained that he ran his Kyiv trip past his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and the British government after being invited by Olga Rudnieva, the founder and CEO of the Superhumans Trauma Centre in Lviv. The royal previously visited the centre, which treats wounded amputees, in April and met Rudnieva by chance in New York a couple of months ago. "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," he shared. "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." During his visit, Harry is expected to spend time with 200 military veterans, meet Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, and visit the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War. In 2014, the Duke founded the biennial Invictus Games, in which wounded veterans compete in sporting events. Harry's trip comes days after he met his father, King Charles III, in London on Wednesday, marking their first in-person meeting since February 2024.