{"id":32819,"date":"2026-08-24T18:29:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T18:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/32819\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T18:29:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T18:29:15","slug":"burnham-hits-back-after-kremlin-accuses-him-of-prolonging-war-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/32819\/","title":{"rendered":"Burnham hits back after Kremlin accuses him of prolonging war in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking after he chaired a <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/world-news\/2026\/04\/25\/britain-france-european-nato-coalition-willing-ukraine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">coalition of the willing<\/a> meeting that included Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, Mr Burnham decried \u201cdesperate\u201d Russian \u201cthreats\u201d against the UK for its support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just shows that what we are doing is having an impact and we should stand firm together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The meeting covered \u201csystematic and escalating strikes\u201d on Ukraine, stricter sanctions on Moscow, increased military support for Kyiv and preparations for a \u201cmultinational force\u201d to deploy upon a \u201ccredible cessation of hostilities\u201d, alongside other topics, according to a German government statement.<\/p>\n<p>The Prime Minister announced that the UK would \u201cdig into our own stocks of air defence and support others digging into their own stocks\u201d to protect Ukraine\u2019s skies amid intensified aerial bombardments by Moscow.<\/p>\n<p>European countries would also continue work on Project Freya, a pan-European anti-ballistic missile defence initiative, which hopes to have its first prototype by mid-2027, he said.<\/p>\n<p>Burnham issues \u2018clear message\u2019 to Russia<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s clear Russia is running out of options so Putin is hoping he can win through a campaign of terror using ballistic missiles against Ukrainian civilians,\u201d Mr Burnham said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis can never be the route to victory, we need to be clear in sending that message today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, Mr Zelensky, who in recent weeks has repeatedly appealed to the US for stocks of their Patriot anti-missile interceptors, said his country would need 300 of the munitions for the winter.<\/p>\n<p>Without explicitly naming the US, Mr Burnham said the coalition was \u201cworking with our allies outside of this coalition\u201d to resolve the issue, arguing Ukraine \u201cneeds more help to protect its people right now\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Patriots are the only weapon in Kyiv\u2019s arsenal capable of downing ballistic missiles, which are extremely fast and have an unpredictable trajectory, but Washington has halted transfers amid severe shortages and has declined to provide production licences to the war-torn country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking after he chaired a coalition of the willing meeting that included Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, Mr&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4472,158,83,25,6,11,26,655,35,81],"class_list":["post-32819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-andy-burnham","tag-kyiv","tag-live-priority","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-standard","tag-ukraine","tag-us-content","tag-volodymyr-zelensky","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32819","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=32819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}