King Charles is determined to visit Ukraine again before he “gets too old” to see the war-ravaged nation.
The 74-year-old monarch – who visited Ukraine in 1996 and welcomed its president Volodymyr Zelensky to Buckingham Palace in early February – shared his desire to go back during a visit to open the new headquarters of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in Canary Wharf, London.
One day before the 13-month anniversary of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the nation, Charles said: “I must go again before I get too old. I would like the chance to see Ukraine again.
Established in 1991 at the end of the Cold War to build open market economies in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the EBRD’s new offices are in a 26-storey skyscraper that is one of the most environmentally advanced buildings in Britain as it is completely run on green energy.
It has an office in Kyiv but the bank was forced to evacuate its staff to Warsaw in Poland following the outbreak of war on February 24, 2022, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths on both sides and instigated Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
