The Yomiuri Shimbun
Ukrainian Economy, Environment and Agriculture Minister Oleksii Sobolev speaks during an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun in Osaka on Aug. 6.
8:00 JST, August 30, 2025
“Osaka reminds me a lot of Odesa,” Oleksii Sobolev told me in an interview at the Osaka-Kansai Expo this month.
Sobolev is Ukraine’s economy, environment and agriculture minister, appointed when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reshuffled his Cabinet in July. He noted that the Japanese and Ukrainian cities share similarities as major port towns.
“Odesa, Osaka — it even sounds a bit similar.”
Odesa, a grain export port on the Black Sea, has been a target of intense missile and drone attacks by Russia. When the minister asked me, “Have you been to Odesa?” I replied, “No, but I watched the movie ‘Battleship Potemkin,’” referring to the internationally acclaimed Soviet-era silent film that was shot in that city. The minister responded with a smile, “Culture truly connects people.”
As an example of cultural connections between Japan and Ukraine, he cited Aonishiki, who left Ukraine in 2022 because of the war and has now become a popular sumo wrestler. Our interview took place on the 80th anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Sobolev said he had seen the anime “Barefoot Gen” several times in his childhood and condemned Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons as “inhuman.” The anime is about a boy named Gen who loses most of his family in the bombing but bravely carries on with his life.
The minister’s communication method is similar to what Ukraine itself is doing at the Expo. His nation’s exhibition there aims to deepen connections between visitors and Ukraine through content that everyone can relate to, such as culture and education.
The Ukrainian pavilion is in a corner of a building on the Expo grounds called Commons-C. The pavilion, with only about 50 square meters of floor space, is designed to look like a store decorated in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag. Inside, 18 different types of objects shaped like megaphones, suitcases and other items are displayed on shelves. Each object has a tag with a barcode, but no prices are shown. A sign hanging from the ceiling reads “NOT FOR SALE.” The idea behind this is that “the items on display are things that cannot be sold or bought, but rather represent values that Ukraine is fighting to protect.”
As visitors enter, pavilion staff members hand them special devices they can use to scan the bar codes. The barcode on an object shaped like a game board, for example, causes a 40-second video to play on the device’s screen.
The video transports Expo-goers to a street corner in the capital city of Kyiv, where a 10-year-old girl challenges adult passersby to a game of checkers, with the rule that if they lose, they must make a charitable donation. When shown the banknotes she has collected through her checkers skill, the leader of the charity organization is so moved that he covers his face with both hands.
There are daily queues of visitors waiting to enter the booth-like pavilion. It is estimated that 8,000 to 20,000 people experience it each day. It is exceptionally crowded for a small pavilion in the Commons.
Sobolev explained the intention behind the exhibits. “Because of the war, we had less time to prepare than many other countries … So, we had to bring some really powerful and simple concepts to show people … When people read news from Ukraine, the coverage is usually about shelling and destruction … And the [image of] life in Ukraine sometimes is lost and people sometimes would think that all Ukraine is destroyed. That is completely not the case.”
Nearly every day at the Expo is designated as the “national day” of a participating country, which hosts special events on the day. Ukraine’s national day on Aug. 5 featured a virtual reality event that took participants on a visit to a school in the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is located near the front lines.
In the 5-minute VR show, a 12-year-old schoolboy guides viewers through a school built 7 meters underground to avoid enemy bombardment. Akari Nagayasu, 14, a second-year junior high school student in Osaka City who tried the VR goggles, said she imagined the daily life of students her age in the Eastern European country. She explained that the underground school had “regular classes like English, but also lessons on first aid for injuries and how to respond if you find a landmine.” She continued, “It’s the same as in Japan in that it’s fun to meet friends at school, but one reason why they like school is totally different — because it’s ‘safe’ underground.”
Emphasizing the “citizens’ viewpoint” at the Expo, Ukraine likely aims to elicit empathy from visitors and sustain their interest in the country.
Former Japanese Ambassador to Ukraine Kuninori Matsuda said the international community’s stance on the Ukraine issue can be divided into four categories: countries that actively support Ukraine, countries that have little interest, countries that say they support Ukraine but do nothing, and countries that support Russia.
“Over the past 3½ years, Ukraine has made diplomatic efforts at various levels. In the first year, it sought support from all countries and secured a resolution at the U.N. However, as the second and third years passed, the limitations [of that approach] became apparent. The approach shifted to focusing efforts on countries that provide support, or those that go beyond support to engage in trade and investment, in order to allocate limited resources effectively,” Matsuda said.
Zelenskyy did not attend the national day ceremony. In his place, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska expressed her gratitude for the support of Japan and other countries while leading a delegation that included the Ukrainian foreign minister. In an apparent mix-up, a written message from Zelenskyy was displayed on a screen while the foreign minister gave a speech. The text made Ukraine’s wishes clear:
“But we are here today not only to express our gratitude — we are also extending an invitation. An invitation to create Ukraine’s future together. To rebuild Ukraine, based on the principles that EXPO 2025 celebrates — a vision of a technologically developed, responsible, and ethical society.”
Supporters such as the Czech Republic and Romania, which have larger pavilions, provided venues for Ukraine’s national day events. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance of Western countries, held its first-ever event at an Expo, conducting panel discussions on support for Ukraine at the five-nation Nordic Pavilion.
Business meetings were held both inside and outside the Expo site, and numerous agreements on cooperation in investment and trade were reached between Japanese and Ukrainian entities. Ukraine appears to have achieved certain outcomes at the Expo in Osaka.
It is estimated that Ukraine’s reconstruction will require $524 billion over the next 10 years, an astronomical amount that Matsuda calls “the largest reconstruction demand since World War II.” While coordination for a three-way summit between the United States, Russia and Ukraine has begun, there is still no end in sight to the war. Can Ukraine attract concrete cooperation such as investment from its partners amid wartime conditions and advance national reconstruction? Ukraine’s crucial moment continues.
Political Pulse appears every Saturday.
Kenji Nakanishi
Kenji Nakanishi is a deputy editor in the City News Department of the Yomiuri Shimbun Osaka.
