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More from World<\/p>\nBritish Prime Minister Andy Burnham will visit Kyiv on Monday on his first international visit since taking office last month, his office said, as Ukraine marks its 35th independence anniversary. <\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will visit Kyiv on Monday on his first international visit since taking office last month, his office said, as Ukraine marks its 35th independence anniversary.<\/p>\n
Burnham has vowed to give strong support to Ukraine as it battles Russia’s invasion.<\/p>\n
The Labour Party leader’s visit comes as he announced that Britain had “agreed that defence firm MBDA can release classified information on UK components for the long-range missile, SCALP, to establish local assembly lines in Ukraine”, a statement said.<\/p>\n
The missile is the French-produced version of the UK’s Storm Shadow, with both using shared French and British technology.<\/p>\n
The UK was first to gift Ukraine long-range strike weapons for defensive purposes in 2023, according to the premier’s Downing Street office.<\/p>\n
It said that the decision to release the classified information would “allow the French and Ukrainians to move forward with the Ukrainian assembly of the missile”.<\/p>\n
“It also complements the major UK effort to rapidly develop low-cost advanced long-range strike weapons for Ukraine through Project Brakestop,” it added.<\/p>\n
In Kyiv, Burnham will co-chair his first meeting of the Coalition of the Willing, which brings together countries supporting Kyiv.<\/p>\n
More from World<\/p>\n
The French presidency confirmed on Friday that the meeting would be held in a “hybrid” format — meaning some participants would attend in person while others joined via video conference.<\/p>\n
The office of Irish prime minister Micheal Martin indicated that he would participate remotely.<\/p>\n
“On Ukraine’s 35th anniversary of independence, the Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: the UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes,” Burnham said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Burnham’s visit comes weeks after Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky visited London.<\/p>\n
During that trip, London also announced it would share with Kyiv information on a new battle-tested electronic jamming capability dubbed “Stone Cloak”.<\/p>\n
When attached to drones, the tablet-sized, military-grade jammers can hinder Russian air defence systems from tracking and targeting such weapons in-flight, Downing Street said.<\/p>\n
Britain has been one of Ukraine’s strongest backers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, committing around 25 billion pounds ($34 billion) in support, including 16 billion pounds in military aid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British Prime Minister Andy Burnham will visit Kyiv on Monday on his first international visit since taking office…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11410,11411,158,4141,11413,2004,11414,11412],"class_list":["post-32275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-andy-burnham-ukraine-visit","tag-british-prime-minister","tag-kyiv","tag-project-brakestop","tag-scalp-missile","tag-storm-shadow","tag-uk-military-aid","tag-ukraine-independence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}