After being shot at a campaign event, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former Prime Minister, has died in hospital. Abe was giving a speech in Nara on Friday morning July 08, 2022, when he was twice shot. The gunman was stopped by security personnel on the spot. A 41-year-old suspect is currently being held in police custody.
According to information from the Nara Medical University, Abe was declared dead at 5:03 p.m. local time.
Shinzo Abe was Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister. He is best known for his hawkish foreign policies and signature economic strategy, known as “Abenomics”. A 67-year-old Abe, led the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to victory two times.
Shinzo Abe supported Ukraine after the Russian aggression in 2014. He visited Kyiv on June 5, 2015. This was the first time in the history of Japanese-Ukrainian relations that a Japanese official at the rank of prime minister had visited Ukraine. Abe claimed that Russia had committed an “unforgivable crime…and a serious threat to the international order” in its invasion of Ukraine.
Ukrainian ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin posted on Facebook:
“Today was killed a friend of Ukraine – former Prime Minister of Japan Abe. For me, he was the personification of a real samurai. Calm and ready to act. At the beginning of his premiership, he dreamed of agreeing with Moscow on the start of negotiations regarding the Kuril Islands. Sanctions against Russia destroyed his dream: he could have tried to leave them, but he did as he thought was right. He chose his values over his dreams. And when we joked during the meeting that we have a common problem – Russia – he said that Ukraine has no better friend in Asia.”
