UK guns, drones aiming at Putin
Kyiv wins more material
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited Britain, winning the promise of hundreds more missiles and drones and saying his goal of enlisting Western fighter jets was drawing nearer.
The visit came as a Russian missile strike killed four people and hit a hospital in eastern Ukraine, but also as Mr Zelensky’s army readies a longawaited counteroffensive against Russian troops with claimed gains around the flashpoint town of Bakhmut.
After meeting UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Mr Zelensky said he was “very positive” about creating a “jets coalition” in the war against Russia, with a decision expected soon.
Western nations have baulked at providing jets to help Ukraine take command of the skies against Russia, although Mr Sunak said the UK was preparing to open a flight school to train its pilots.
France, too, has now offered to train Ukrainian fighter pilots, President Emmanuel Macron said in Paris, but he ruled out sending jets to Kyiv.
And while Russia’s ally China vies to act as peace broker, sending an envoy to Kyiv this week, Mr Zelensky drummed up hefty new packages of military aid on weekend visits to France and Germany.
He proceeded on Monday (local time) to the UK prime minister’s country estate of Chequers outside London, where Mr Sunak pledged airdefence missiles and longrange attack drones for Ukraine.
Russia said the new UK weapons would only cause “further destruction”, and claimed to have downed a Storm Shadow cruise missile that Britain said last week it was providing, in the West’s first deployment of long-range rocketry for Ukraine.
Mr Sunak noted that the Chequers meeting was taking place in the build-up to a Council of Europe leaders’ meeting in Iceland and a G7 summit in Japan, as he hit out at Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
“The front lines of Putin’s war of aggression may be in Ukraine but the fault lines stretch all over the world,” Mr Sunak said, vowing: “We must not let them down.”
Mr Sunak hosted Zelensky in the same Chequers room used by Britain’s World War II leader Winston Churchill to broadcast defiant speeches vowing victory over the Nazis.
“And the same way today, your leadership, your country’s bravery and fortitude are an inspiration to us all,” he told Mr Zelensky.
Dressed in his trademark fatigues, Mr Zelensky gave a bear hug to Mr Sunak after disembarking from a Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter.