The Duke of Sussex has revealed his focus in the coming year will be on his father, the King.

The Duke, who turns 41 on Monday, met the King for the first time in 19 months during his trip to the UK earlier this week.

Speaking to The Guardian during an unannounced trip to Kyiv, the Duke said he thought the visit with his father had gone well and that over the coming year “the focus really has to be on my dad”.

The pair met for 54 minutes at Clarence House on Wednesday, when the King returned to London from Balmoral for his weekly cancer treatment and a handful of state duties.

It was the first time the Duke had seen the King since he made the 5,000-mile trip from California to London in February 2024, following the King’s cancer diagnosis.

The Duke provoked criticism in May when he told the BBC he did not know “how much longer” his father had left amid his cancer treatment.

Despite losing the High Court claim over his security arrangements, he also said he would like to spend more time in the UK – and bring Princess Lilibet and Prince Archie, his two children, with him.

“This week has definitely brought that closer,” he said.

The King has not seen his grandchildren since Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee in 2022.

Discussing whether he regretted making bombshell allegations about the Royal family in his interview with Oprah Winfrey, his Netflix documentaries and his memoir Spare, the Duke said: “My conscience is clear.”

He added: “I don’t believe that I aired my dirty laundry in public. It was a difficult message, but I did it in the best way possible.”

Ukraine visit

On his trip to Ukraine with the Invictus Games Foundation, the Duke visited Maidan Square in Kyiv, where an unofficial memorial for the dead has been created.

“I wanted to find a spot to lay the wreath in peace away from everyone,” he said, adding: “I didn’t appreciate how far back it went. Honestly, it is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. But also one of the most beautiful.”

He is then reported to have “disappeared” for about an hour, with the suggestion being that he may have taken the opportunity to meet Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Ukrainian president is a champion of the Duke’s Invictus Games for wounded military personnel and reportedly made it known that he wished to meet him.

It is the Duke’s second visit to Ukraine in six months after he went to Lviv in April to tour the Superhumans trauma centre and to meet Olga Rudnieva, its chief executive.

Ms Rudnieva, who suggested that the Duke would make the biggest impact for Ukrainians by returning to Kyiv, said his decision to go to the capital was “a symbol of victory and power”.

“People look at him and his military experience and they see he is not afraid to come to Ukraine,” she said. “It is so important that he came.”

Speaking about his mission of helping wounded personnel there, the Duke said: “Seeing people with prosthetics and life-changing injuries is going to be the norm in Ukraine for the coming decades.”