AS Ukraine's capital came under some of the heaviest direct bombardment of the war last week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met a delegation of Japanese members of parliament and then German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
While the Japanese parliamentarians visited an underground drone workshop in the capital, Merz attended a memorial to slain Ukrainian service personnel as well as the scene of a Russian strike on the National Academy of Sciences in late September.
Before Merz headed back to Berlin, the leaders announced that, despite warnings from the Kremlin for foreign embassies to quit the Ukrainian capital for safety, neither Germany nor any other major nation had any plans to do so.
With a lack of air defences now leaving Kyiv and other major cities wide open to attack, Ukrainians are now bracing for perhaps the toughest winter of the 4-1/2-year-old war.
