PM MEETS ZELENSKYY AFTER BOMBING AT TRAIN STATION
BORIS JOHNSON has pledged to send 120 armoured vehicles to Ukraine, after meeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for talks in Kyiv. The Prime Minister said he made his unannounced visit to the Ukrainian capital as “a show of our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine”.
As well as the armoured vehicles, in a significant stepping-up of UK military support, Mr Johnson said Britain would also be sending new anti-ship missile systems.
It comes the day after he announced a further £100m worth of UK military assistance, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry and so-called “suicide drones”, which loiter over the battlefield before attacking their target.
Following his meeting with the Ukrainian leader, Mr Johnson said in a statement: “Ukraine has defied the odds and pushed back Russian forces from the gates of Kyiv, achieving the greatest feat of arms of the 21st century.
“It is because of President Zelenskyy’s resolute leadership and the invincible heroism and courage of the Ukrainian people that Putin’s monstrous aims are being thwarted.
“I made clear today that the United Kingdom stands unwaveringly with them in this ongoing fight, and we are in it for the long run.
“We are stepping up our own military and economic support and convening a global alliance to bring this tragedy to an end, and ensure Ukraine survives and thrives as a free and sovereign nation.”
A picture of the meeting was posted online by the Ukrainian embassy in London. Mr Johnson later posted his own picture of the meeting on Twitter, saying he was there “as a show of our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine”.
The Prime Minister’s pledge followed an appeal from the Ukrainians to western nations to send more arms as they prepare for the expected Russian offensive in the east of the country, after Moscow pulled back its forces from around Kyiv.
Mr Zelenskyy has called on the international community to hold to account Russian forces who carried out a missile strike on a crowded railway station, killing at least 52 people.
The station at Kramatorsk was packed with women and children trying to flee west before the Russian advance arrives, when the missile hit on Friday.
“All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,” Mr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the attack, but western officials believe it was probably a Russian Tochka-U missile, which Nato refers to as a SS-21, which was fired indiscriminately towards the town centre.
Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said 10 evacuation corridors were planned yesterday in hopes of allowing residents to leave war zones in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which comprise the Donbas, as well as neighbouring Zaporizhzhia.
Ukrainian authorities have called on civilians to get out ahead of an imminent offensive by Russian forces. Britain’s Ministry of Defence reported that Russian naval forces were launching cruise missiles to support the ground operations in eastern Ukraine, including in the port cities of Mykolaiv and Mariupol.
After failing to occupy Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance, Russian forces have set their sights on eastern Ukraine.
Many of the civilians now trying to evacuate are accustomed to living in or near a war zone because Moscowbacked rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014 in the Donbas.
A total of 176 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war, while 324 more have been wounded, the country’s Prosecutor General’s Office said yesterday.
Ukrainian authorities have warned they expect to find more mass killings once they reach the southern port city of Mariupol, which is also in the Donbas and has been subjected to a monthlong blockade and intense fighting.
As journalists who had been largely absent from the city began to trickle back in, new images emerged of the devastation from an airstrike on a theatre last month that reportedly killed hundreds of civilians seeking shelter.