UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham will visit Ukraine on Monday on his first overseas trip since taking office, and will announce British support to help Kyiv improve its domestic production of long-range missiles.<\/p>\n
Burnham will be in Ukraine to co-chair a meeting of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, a group of countries backing Ukraine, on Monday, when he is also due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n
He is set to announce that Britain has agreed to allow European missile manufacturer MBDA to release classified information on British-made components used in the SCALP long-range cruise missile, according to his office.<\/p>\n
That will help enable France and Ukraine to establish local assembly lines for the missile, which shares British and French technology, according to Downing Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cUkraine\u2019s security is our security,\u201d Burnham said in a statement, adding that Britain would stand by Ukraine \u201cfor as long as it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Britain has been one of Ukraine\u2019s strongest supporters since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion in 2022, providing military support, economic aid and diplomatic backing.<\/p>\n
Britain was the first country to announce plans to supply Ukraine with Western-made battle tanks and long-range cruise missiles following the invasion and has pledged more than \u00a325 billion ($34 billion) so far in military and civilian support.<\/p>\n
REASSURANCE OF UK SUPPORT<\/p>\n
Moscow warned London last week of \u201cconsequences\u201d for supplying drones to Kyiv, accusing Britain of deepening its involvement in the war following a report \u200bthat British-made drones had been used for long-range strikes against Russia \u200bfor the first time.<\/p>\n
Burnham is expected to use his visit to reassure Ukraine and its allies that Britain would continue to play a leading role in efforts to strengthen Ukraine\u2019s security under his government.<\/p>\n
The push to expand Ukraine\u2019s domestic missile production comes as Ukraine increasingly relies on long-range drones and strike weapons to target Russian oil refineries and logistics facilities far behind the front lines.<\/p>\n
The visit comes weeks after Zelenskyy traveled to Britain in late July as Burnham\u2019s first international guest, following the Labour leader\u2019s election as prime minister a week earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham will visit Ukraine on Monday on his first overseas trip since taking office,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8075,660,661,656,291,6303,473,26,108],"class_list":["post-32665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-burnham","tag-circulated-defense-news","tag-defense-news","tag-dn-dnr","tag-missiles","tag-patriot","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-zelenskyy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32665","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=32665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}