Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of the UK has promised to send hundreds of attack drones and other military hardware to Ukraine after face-to-face talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday.
The Ukrainian president arrived in Britain after visiting other European capitals over the weekend as he sought to shore up support ahead of an anticipated counter-offensive by the country’s military to take back territory occupied by Russian forces.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian president Vladimir Putin, told journalists that the Kremlin took an “extremely negative” view of Britain providing Kyiv with weapons capable of hitting Russian targets well behind the front line.
Sunak said it was “very interesting” to hear from the Kremlin but said the UK was “not going away” and that Britain was “here for the long term”.
In a tweet before the meeting, Zelenskyy said: “The UK is a leader when it comes to expanding our capabilities on the ground and in the air. This co-operation will continue today.”
After the talks, he was asked whether Ukraine was waiting for more weaponry before starting its counter-offensive. “We really need some more time,” he said. “Not too much. We will be ready in some time.”
Sunak confirmed the provision of hundreds of air-defence missiles and more unmanned aerial systems, including hundreds of unspecified attack drones with a range of more than 200km — a weapon system that is not known to be in use with the British military.
The promise of further weapons for both defensive and offensive purposes came after the UK announced last week that it had provided Storm Shadow stand-off weapons to Ukraine, the first long-range cruise missile in Kyiv’s arsenal.
Downing Street said the extra weaponry would be provided over the “coming months”. Sunak hosted the Ukrainian leader at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat just outside London.
Zelenskyy renewed his plea for western-built combat aircraft and said he wanted to create a “jet coalition” among allied countries because “we can’t control the sky”.
The UK has previously said it would provide pilot training but Downing Street said on Monday it would not be sending jet fighters to Ukraine. Kyiv favours the US-built F-16 jet, which is widely operated by Nato and other air forces, although not by the UK. Washington has so far ruled out supplying the aircraft.
“This is a crucial moment in Ukraine’s resistance to a terrible war of aggression they did not choose or provoke,” Sunak said. “We must not let them down. The front lines of Putin’s war of aggression may be in Ukraine, but the faultlines stretch all over the world.”
The UK provided £2.3bn worth of military support to Ukraine last year and was the first country to offer to supply main battle tanks. The UK said last month it had completed the delivery of a “squadron” of Challenger 2s, thought to amount to at least 14 tanks, along with other weaponry including armoured vehicles and self-propelled guns.
The UK has also trained 15,000 Ukrainian troops in Britain since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year and had previously helped train the country’s armed forces in Ukraine, alongside other Nato members, after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.
Before arriving in the UK, Zelensky had travelled to Rome, Berlin and Paris over the weekend to hold talks with Italian, German and French leaders and received further pledges of military aid.
The Ukrainian military has spent months planning a counter-offensive to push Russian forces out of eastern and southern regions that account for almost a fifth of the country.
Fighting has intensified around the bombed-out eastern city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces have launched counter-attacks on the flanks of the city that Russian forces mostly control but have struggled to fully capture for nine months.
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