Slovenia's chargé d'affaires Bostjan Lesjak arrived in Kyiv on Sunday and is to start working on Monday, the Slovenian government stated on its Twitter account.

According to the Foreign Ministry’s statement, Slovenia’s interim chargé d’affaires Lesjak had arrived in Kyiv safely on Sunday. The Slovenian Embassy in Kyiv will thus reopen at 9am Monday.

Lesjak also published photos showing him in the premises of the Slovenian embassy in the Ukrainian capital city.

Lesjak, a lieutenant colonel of the Slovenian army, has been transferred to the diplomatic service and dispatched to Kyiv as Slovenia’s gesture of support to the Ukrainian government.

Prime Minister Janez Jansa, who together with the Polish and Czech counterparts — Mateusz Morawiecki and Petr Fiala — travelled by train to Kyiv on 15 March to support Ukraine’s authorities, has dismissed the Opposition’s claims that deploying a Slovenian diplomat in Kyiv is a high-risk move.

According to local media, Lesjak was a civilian observer in OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas from 2015 to 2019.

Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Tomaz Mencin, who left Kyiv for Rzezawa, southern Poland, at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, continues performing his ambassadorial duties from that Polish city.