Japan's new foreign minister, Yoko Kamikawa, told her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday that Tokyo will continue providing support to Kyiv in its fight against Russia, the Foreign Ministry said.
In the meeting on the sidelines of the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Kamikawa also told Kuleba that Japan will work with Ukraine to achieve a just and lasting peace to the war that followed Russia's invasion in February 2022, the ministry added.
On Monday, Kamikawa, a veteran lawmaker who replaced Yoshimasa Hayashi in a Cabinet reshuffle last week to become the first woman appointed to the role in around two decades, chaired her first Group of Seven foreign ministerial gathering.
In the chair's statement issued after the meeting, Kamikawa said the G7 members "once again reaffirmed their commitment to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes and unequivocally condemned in the strongest possible terms Russia's war of aggression."
Earlier this month Hayashi made an unannounced trip to Ukraine, pledging to bolster support for the nation's efforts to defend itself from Russia as well as to recover from the conflict. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also visited the country in March.
Japan, serving as chair of the G7 this year, has been actively offering support to Ukraine. But it has been limited to supplying nonmilitary assistance due to restrictions imposed by its war-renouncing Constitution.
In May, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a surprise appearance at the G7 summit in Kishida's home constituency of Hiroshima, which was devastated by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945, amid fears that Moscow might use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine.