The president of Ukraine is going to visit Japan to join the “G-7 Summit.”

According to reports on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will fly to Hiroshima to take part in the Group of Seven leaders conference in the bomb-ravaged city, a trip that would be rich in significance amid Russian nuclear saber-rattling in the brutal war against its neighbour.

The president of Ukraine was scheduled to fly into Japan on Saturday for his first trip to Asia following Russia’s invasion of his nation in February of last year, and he was also scheduled to attend the G7 summit on Sunday. Zelenskyy is believed to have had bilateral talks with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who in March became the last member of the G7 to travel to Kyiv to meet with the wartime president.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum may be visited by Zelenskyy as part of his journey. On Friday, G7 leaders went to the location, spoke with a survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing, and were led by Kishida through graphic exhibits illustrating the horrors of nuclear weapons.

On Sunday, the summit’s final day, the Ukrainian president was originally scheduled to take part in an online session.

In advance of an eagerly anticipated counteroffensive, Zelenskyy recently finished a tour of the European G7 nations. It is widely believed that the leader of Ukraine wants to secure territorial gains so that he can use them as leverage in any future peace negotiations with the Russians.

Kishida invited the Ukrainian president to take part virtually in the G7 summit during his brief March visit to Kyiv.

The G7 leaders and representatives of other nations and international organisations invited to the summit could meet in person to further solidify the coalition against Russia and lend more weight to discussions about the war.

The trip would also be the most recent in a string of diplomatic triumphs for Kishida, whose popularity has increased recently, largely as a result of his initiatives to mend fences with South Korea, his neighbour, and strengthen bilateral relations.

In light of growing rumours that a snap election will be held soon after the Hiroshima summit, Kishida’s capacity to gain more ground at the anticipated Zelenskyy meeting may also have a significant bearing on the domestic scene.