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Iran – The Iranian Interior Ministry announced this morning, Saturday, that reformist Masoud Pezeshkian won the presidential elections, beating conservative candidate Saeed Jalili.

The Interior Ministry said Pezeshkian won regarding 55% of the vote, while turnout in the second round of Iran’s presidential election was 49.8%.

Election officials have so far counted more than 30 million votes, with Pezeshkian receiving more than 17 million and Jalili more than 13 million, according to results released by the Interior Ministry.

The Iranian Interior Ministry announced on Friday evening the closure of polling stations in the second round of the presidential elections, with the legal deadline ending at midnight local time and the start of counting votes.

Some 61 million voters were called to participate in the second round of the presidential elections to decide the competition between Jalili and Pezeshkian. The reformist candidate had won over his conservative rival in the first round held on June 28 to choose the successor to the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last May.

The first round witnessed an unprecedented low turnout, as more than 60% of voters abstained from voting in the early elections to choose the country’s president.

The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader acknowledged on Wednesday that “the turnout was lower than expected,” but said it was “completely wrong to think that those who did not vote in the first round are once morest the regime.”

The president is considered the second man in the power structure in Iran following the Supreme Leader Khamenei, who has the final say on all strategic matters, and is also the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces.

“Japan is determined to support Ukraine to restore peace,” Kamikawa said during a press conference in a bomb shelter.

A little earlier, the Japanese embassy announced her arrival, adding that this is the first visit of a diplomat abroad this year.

She went to Bucha, near the capital Kyiv, where Russian forces are blamed for the massacre of civilians in 2022, as well as to Irpiny, the site of fierce fighting in the past.

The previously unannounced visit replaced a two-week tour that had included visits to Poland, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, the United States, Canada, Germany and Turkey starting Friday.

After the Russian invasion, Japan joined countries supporting Ukraine and extended sanctions once morest Moscow, including export bans and asset freezes.

Y. Kamikawa, who was supposed to arrive from Poland, “will once once more reiterate to the Ukrainian side that Japan’s consistent policy of supporting and supporting Ukraine does not change,” the Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

It must inform its Ukrainian counterparts regarding the aid projects that the Japanese will offer to Kyiv, it added.

Japan plans to hold a conference in Tokyo in February to promote economic recovery in Ukraine. Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhalis plans to participate in it.

Mr. Kamikawa is to consult with Ukrainian officials on the details of the conference and participate in “a large-scale handover ceremony of energy-related equipment for winter aid,” the Japanese ministry said.

The minister will also “demonstrate Japan’s determination to uphold the international order based on the ‘rule of law’ in the sense that unilateral status quo the exchange of force, such as Russia’s aggression once morest Ukraine, cannot be accepted,” the statement added.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly stressed the importance of a rules-based international order as Tokyo worries regarding its territorial disputes with neighboring countries, including an increasingly aggressive China.

At the Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Japan last May, the bloc’s leaders agreed to cut off Russia from G-7 countries’ technology, industrial equipment and services that support its war machine.