Burnham is the fifth British prime minister<\/a> to deal with Zelenskyy since the start of the conflict in February 2022.<\/p>\nBurnham told Zelenskyy it was \u201cno accident\u201d that the Ukrainian president was the first international leader he has welcomed to the UK since taking office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is intended to send a very clear message: We are with Ukraine 100 percent,\u201d Burnham said. \u201cI will honour every commitment this country has made to Ukraine in full.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burnham announced he intends to visit Ukraine \u201csoon\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy continues to call for help to defend his country as US-led ceasefire negotiations have slowed while Washington\u2019s attention has been diverted to the Iran war.<\/p>\n
The two leaders visited a naval base in the southern city of Portsmouth to speak to armed forces personnel involved in training Ukrainian service members.<\/p>\n
They have been taking part in an exercise aimed at strengthening their fighting capabilities and measures to counter mines in the Black Sea, the UK government said.<\/p>\n
The UK will give Ukraine the intellectual property behind its new \u201cStone Cloak\u201d electronic warfare system, which is capable of jamming Russian air defences to stop drones from being detected, Burnham\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBritain stands with Ukraine shoulder to shoulder, and our support remains unwavering,\u201d Burnham said in a statement. \u201cRussia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve long-lasting and just peace for Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n
In another sign of Ukraine\u2019s deepening defence ties with Britain, Zelenskyy told the broadcaster Sky News on Sunday that he wanted to sign a strong \u201cdrone deal\u201d to boost production and technology sharing.<\/p>\n
He admitted, \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough missiles to defend\u201d against Russia\u2019s ultra-fast ballistic missiles that have put Ukraine\u2019s air defence system under strain in a recent spate of deadly attacks.<\/p>\n
Moscow \u201ccan increase the production of ballistic missiles and that\u2019s why we need air defence as quick as possible\u201d, Zelenskyy said.<\/p>\n
Downing Street noted the UK\u2019s total support for Ukraine has reached 25 billion pounds ($33bn) since 2022, including 16 billion pounds ($21bn) in direct military assistance.<\/p>\n
When in the US, Zelenskyy is also expected to attend the funeral for US Senator Lindsey Graham, a supporter of Ukraine who died this month, a day after returning from a visit to Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Trump and Zelenskyy have had a fraught relationship, which has veered from a shouting match in the Oval Office in February 2025 to warmer ties in recent months.<\/p>\n
The US president told Zelenskyy on the sidelines of a NATO summit this month that he was giving Ukraine permission to build US-designed Patriot air defence systems capable of downing ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n
Moscow and Kyiv have intensified drone and missile strikes in recent months, and while Ukraine has found considerable success in attacking Russian infrastructure, it is running short of defensive munitions, leaving the civilian areas Russia is targeting vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Washington has advanced bipartisan legislation targeting countries buying Russian energy exports, potentially clearing the way for stronger pressure on Moscow.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s support for Ukraine comes as the president faces domestic pressure to end the war in Iran that the US started with Israel in late February.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile in Russia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria \u2060Zakharova said Moscow is \u2060open \u2060to considering new ideas and proposals related to the \u2060Ukraine peace process.<\/p>\n
She made the comments after a Ukrainian source told the Reuters news agency last week \u200cthat US and Ukrainian officials had been discussing a proposal for an air ceasefire to take to their Russian counterparts as \u2060part of a new \u2060round of peace talks.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin said on Monday that \u2060it had not seen any specific \u2060information regarding \u2060new peace proposals before Zelenskyy\u2019s visit to the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Burnham is the fifth British prime minister to deal with President Zelenskyy since the war on Ukraine started…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[252,18,1624,5,523,6,2126],"class_list":["post-91421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-europe","tag-news","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-united-kingdom","tag-us-canada"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116993226332301629","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}