The United Kingdom has allocated nearly 25 billion pounds sterling (about 30 billion euros) in military aid to Ukraine since 2022. Boris Johnson was the first to show a firm commitment to supporting Kyiv, more effusive in his early days than Washington or Brussels, and his fervor has been inherited and maintained by successive prime ministers.
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That is why the first visit of a foreign dignitary, during the term inaugurated by Andy Burnham at Downing Street, has been the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited this Monday along with the new British head of government the naval base in Portsmouth, located on the south coast of England. Both held their first meeting aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Elizabeth. Nearly 200 Ukrainian soldiers participated there in joint counter-mine technique exercises.
These multinational maritime maneuvers, coordinated by the United States Sixth Fleet and Ukraine, focus on mine deactivation, underwater operations, and regional security strategies.
“My support for Ukraine is one hundred percent, it is unwavering. I will do everything the Ukrainian people need,” Burnham told the BBC hours before the visit. If Zelensky is the first international dignitary he receives, he was also the last one his predecessor, Keir Starmer, said goodbye to in a lightning visit to Kyiv. “You will get the same help from me,” promised the new prime minister, who praised Starmer’s effort in combating Russian aggression.
Zelensky has secured significant aid in the United Kingdom. The new government has given the green light to transfer to Kyiv the intellectual property of the Stone Cloak, a tablet-sized jammer that the Ukrainian army already attaches to its drones to confuse Russian detection signals. By giving them the power to produce them themselves, London also ensures it obtains on-the-ground information about the device’s capabilities to speed up its development.
Ukraine has gradually shifted from being an attacked country urgently needing international community aid to a necessary partner to accelerate rearmament that many European nations have embarked on, facing the Russian threat.
“We have talked about our defense. For Ukraine, it is very important to have sufficient capabilities to protect the lives of our citizens from the air and sea. We have discussed joint production of defense systems. I am very grateful to the United Kingdom for the decision made today [Monday] to provide Ukraine with electronic warfare technologies that protect our drones. It will be really useful on the battlefield. Together we can achieve much more in the field of drones and other technologies,” Zelensky wrote on the social network X at the end of his visit.
Zelensky, whose next destination is the United States, has expressed in interviews with various British media his concern about the increase in ballistic missile production that Russia is accelerating. Ukraine has a serious deficiency in its air defense and its volume of interceptor missiles.
“We have talked thoroughly about that issue,” Burnham acknowledged, “especially about Ukraine’s need to protect its key infrastructures when winter comes, which is especially harsh there. We have pushed some matters that now must be addressed by the rest of the international partners,” the British prime minister explained.
“You are the first international leader I have received since I became prime minister, and it is not by chance,” Burnham said to Zelensky in his first words of welcome. The new British government wanted to reaffirm its commitment to Ukraine from the first minute, and in the images offered to the media of the initial moments of the meeting between both leaders aboard the aircraft carrier, the prime minister made a clear statement of intent to his guest: “There has been a change of government in the United Kingdom, does that mean a change in our attitude towards Ukraine?” Burnham rhetorically asked. “I can assure you that it is not so, and that this conviction is shared by all political parties in this country,” he assured Zelensky.
The Ukrainian president, who referred to his host as Andy at all times, invited the British prime minister to visit Ukraine as soon as possible.
