The prime ministers, who arrived by train, sat round a table with their Ukrainian counterpart Denis Shmyhal and the Ukrainian President, who detailed the situation to them.

“They are shelling everywhere. Not only Kyiv but also the western areas,” Zelensky told the prime ministers

“We have to halt this tragedy unfolding in the East as quickly as possible,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a post on Facebook announcing their arrival

Ukraine had the “unequivocal support” of the European Union, he added.

Shmyhal earlier confirmed their arrival in a post on Twitter, saluting the courage of true friends of Ukraine.

He said their talks would focus on support for Ukraine and “strengthening sanctions against the Russian aggression”.

Morawiecki, Czech premier Petr Fiala and Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa, were visiting as “representatives of the European Union,” as said in an early statement from the Polish government.

The visit came as Russia’s pummels were targeted across Ukraine including Kyiv, which had nearly been encircled by Moscow’s troops, and as Russia and Ukraine were due to resume talks to end the nearly three-week war.

“In such crucial times for the world, it is our duty to be in the place where history is being made,” Morawiecki said in a Facebook post, earlier on Tuesday.

“Because this is not about us, it is about the future of our children who deserve to live in a world free from tyranny,” he said.

The government statement said that the visit had been organised “in agreement” with European Council chief Charles Michel and European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen.

“The purpose of the visit is to confirm the unequivocal support of the entire European Union for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine and to present a broad package of support for the Ukrainian state and society,” the statement said.

The trio was accompanied by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s populist right-wing Law and Justice party.

Hideaki Kumazawa, 76, was arrested in June on suspicion of killing his 44-year-old son, Eiichiro, after calling the police and admitting to stabbing him in the neck and chest at their home in Tokyo.

Kumazawa, a retired agricultural vice minister and former envoy to the Czech Republic, told cops at the time he “thought my son might harm others” after finding out about an unconnected stabbing rampage two days earlier that resulted in two people dead and 17 wounded, according to Kyodo News.

He later pleaded guilty to the crime during the trial.

“I think it is my duty to pay for the crime and pray that my son can spend a peaceful time in the afterlife,” Kumazawa said Friday during the closing court session, Kyodo News reported.

During the trial, Judge Tomoyuki Nakayama said the son’s body had more than 30 stab wounds, including some that were very deep, indicating that the killing was not purely self-defence. The son died from massive blood loss.

Prosecutors had sought an eight-year prison term while defence lawyers instead pursued a suspended term, claiming Kumazawa killed the 44-year-old in self-defence after the son’s threat.

Witnesses say the attacker carried a knife in each hand and slashed school children at a bus stop in Kawasaki, Japan.

His son had a developmental disorder and was routinely violent toward his mother. He was removed from his parents and lived alone in an apartment until he returned home a week before the killing.

The Tokyo District Court said in its ruling that the son resumed his violence as soon as he returned home and threatened to kill his father.

In its ruling, the court said that Kumazawa feared his son might harm others as in a case days earlier, when a man described as a social recluse — known in Japan as “hikikomori” — stabbed a number of schoolchildren at a bus stop outside Tokyo, killing two people and wounding 17 others, mostly schoolgirls, before killing himself.

The court ruled that Kumazawa deserved a more lenient six years in prison, taking into consideration his effort to improve his family’s relations with the son, the violence inflicted by his son and the threat of being killed.

The case and the earlier attack in Kawasaki highlighted growing concerns about “hikikomori.”

A government survey in March showed there are an estimated 610,000 “hikikomori” between the ages of 40 to 64 in Japan, mostly men, with many still taken care of by their elderly parents without proper support from the outside.