![\"Ukraine](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/c1_5826497_800.jpg\")
<\/p>\nUkrainian president hopes to persuade European leaders to provide long-range missiles<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky walks with King Charles III and Maj Ben Tracey as they inspect a Guard of Honour formed by the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, at Windsor Castle, on Oct 24, 2025, ahead of a Coalition of the Willing meeting in London. (Photo: AFP) <\/p>\n
LONDON – Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky met King Charles III at Windsor Castle on Friday before a meeting of Kyiv\u2019s key backers, where Britain\u2019s prime minister will call on Europe to deliver more long-range missiles.<\/p>\n
Kyiv\u2019s Western allies have raised pressure on Moscow as the war enters its fourth winter, with the United States and European Union both announcing new sanctions this week on Russian energy aimed at crippling its war economy.<\/p>\n
EU leaders also took steps towards funding Ukraine\u2019s defence for another two years, although they stopped short of greenlighting a mammoth \u201creparations loan\u201d backed by frozen Russian assets.<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian national anthem played at the almost 1,000-year-old Windsor Castle west of London where Zelensky was taken inside for an audience with the king for their third known meeting of the year.<\/p>\n
Later Friday, British premier Keir Starmer will urge allies to \u201cstep up the gifting of long-range capabilities to ensure Ukraine can build on its success\u201d, his office said in a statement ahead of the so-called \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d meeting.<\/p>\n
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and the Netherlands\u2019 Dick Schoof are expected to attend the London summit, with other leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron joining virtually.<\/p>\n
Starmer\u2019s call for more missiles comes after Zelensky failed to secure long-range Tomahawks during a recent visit to Washington, despite multiple pleas for the weapons he says Ukraine needs to hit targets deep inside Russia.<\/p>\n
The nearly four-year war continues to grind on despite US and European efforts to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, with Moscow battering Ukraine\u2019s energy grid this week in deadly drone and missile attacks.<\/p>\n
\u2018Reparations loan\u2019<\/p>\n
Starmer will also urge European leaders to \u201cfinish the job on Russian sovereign assets to unlock billions of pounds to fund Ukraine\u2019s defences\u201d, according to the Downing Street statement.<\/p>\n
It came a day after EU leaders tasked the European Commission to move ahead with options for funding Ukraine for two more years, leaving the door open for a 140-billion-euro ($162 billion) \u201creparations loan\u201d.<\/p>\n
The EU froze around 200 billion euros of Russian central bank assets after Moscow\u2019s tanks rolled into Ukraine, and the European Commission has proposed using the funds to provide a huge loan to Kyiv \u2014 without seizing them outright.<\/p>\n
But the plan has faced strong objections from Belgium, where the bulk of the frozen Russian assets are held.<\/p>\n
The broadly worded conclusions of Thursday\u2019s summit in Brussels \u2014 adopted by all member states except Hungary \u2014 did not mention the loan directly, instead inviting the commission \u201cto present, as soon as possible, options for financial support\u201d.<\/p>\n
Zelensky nonetheless welcomed the outcome as a signal of \u201cpolitical support\u201d for the notion of using Russian assets to keep Kyiv in the fight.<\/p>\n
European Council President Antonio Costa said the bloc had \u201ccommitted to ensure that Ukraine\u2019s financial needs will be covered for the next two years\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia should take good note of this: Ukraine will have the financial resources it needs to defend itself,\u201d he told a news conference.<\/p>\n
More missiles<\/p>\n
Zelensky has been pleading for weeks for more long-range weapons, hoping to capitalise on US President Donald Trump\u2019s growing frustration with Putin after a summit in Alaska failed to yield a breakthrough.<\/p>\n
But the Ukrainian leader left Washington empty-handed last week as Trump seemed to eye a fresh diplomatic breakthrough on the back of the Gaza ceasefire deal.<\/p>\n
The UK and France already supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow and Scalp long-range missiles, while Ukraine also produces its own Flamingo and Neptune missiles.<\/p>\n
Kyiv is particularly keen to get the German equivalent Taurus missiles, a move which Berlin has long resisted over fears that it would cause tensions with Russia to further escalate.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Starmer will also announce the \u201cacceleration\u201d of a programme to manufacture air defence missiles, which aims to supply Ukraine with more than 5,000 such weapons.<\/p>\n
Around 140 \u201clightweight-multirole missiles\u201d will be delivered to Ukraine this winter, according to the Downing Street statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian president hopes to persuade European leaders to provide long-range missiles Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky walks with King…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7730,7731,1760,22712,2046,7710,519,332,657,21151],"class_list":{"0":"post-525077","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-charles","10":"tag-charles-iii","11":"tag-king-charles","12":"tag-peace-talks","13":"tag-putin","14":"tag-royal-families","15":"tag-royal-family","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-zelensky"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115429969621475508","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}