Rishi Sunak will pledge more military equipment to Ukraine when he meets Volodymyr Zelensky for a surprise meeting at Checkers, the British prime minister’s country residence near London.
The Ukrainian president is visiting European capitals over the weekend as he drums up support for his country ahead of an expected counterattack against Russia.
On Monday he announced a visit to the UK. “Today – London,” Zelensky wrote on Twitter. “The UK is a leader when it comes to expanding our capabilities on the ground and in the air. This collaboration will continue today.”
Downing Street said SONAC would confirm the delivery of hundreds more air defense missiles and more unmanned aerial systems, including hundreds of new long-range attack aircraft with a range of more than 200 kilometres.
The United Kingdom confirmed last week that it had supplied Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles, the first long-range cruise missile in Kiev’s arsenal.
Downing Street said the additional weapons would be made available over the coming months and would assist Ukraine in its counter-offensive.
“This is a defining moment in Ukraine’s resistance to a terrible war of aggression that 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 fault lines stretch across the world.”
The UK provided £2.3 billion worth of military support to Ukraine last year, and this year it provided a squadron of Challenger 2 battle tanks along with other weapons including armored vehicles and self-propelled guns.
The United Kingdom has also trained 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Britain, in addition to training forces in Ukraine between 2014 and 2022.
On Sunday, Zelensky held talks with leaders in France and Germany, after he visited Rome on Saturday.
