Refugee-averse Japan welcomes Ukrainians after Russia war

TOKYO (AP) — Dmytro Remez quietly shows on his laptop before and after photos of buildings, clicking to once elegant offices and hotels that turned into lopsided abandoned rubble.

One crumbling building was right in front of his home in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine.

Remez, 24, a fledgling medical doctor studying at Juntendo University, is among the 2,291 Ukrainians who have moved to Japan since the war with Russia began a year ago.

“It’s ridiculous. The main purpose is to destroy everything. If you look at the cities for which they are fighting, the cities are totally destroyed,” he said, sitting in his tiny, but clean, modern dorm in Tokyo.