British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged to send hundreds of attack drones and other military equipment to Ukraine after face-to-face talks with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday.
Ukraine’s president arrived in Britain after visiting other European capitals over the weekend as he sought to shore up support ahead of an expected counteroffensive by the country’s army to retake territory held by Russian forces.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told reporters the Kremlin took an “extremely negative” view of Britain supplying Kiev with weapons capable of striking Russian targets far behind the front lines.
Sunak said it was “very interesting” to hear from the Kremlin, but said the UK “is not going away” and that the UK “is here for a long time”.
In a tweet ahead of the meeting, Zelensky said: “The UK is leading the way in expanding our capabilities on the ground and in the air. This collaboration will continue today.”
After the talks, he was asked whether Ukraine was waiting for more weapons before launching its counteroffensive. “We really need more time,” he said. “Not too much. We’ll be ready in a while.”
Sunak confirmed the supply of hundreds of anti-aircraft missiles and more unmanned aerial systems, including hundreds of unspecified attack drones with a range of more than 200 kilometers – a weapon system that the British military is not known to use.
The promise of more weapons for defensive and offensive purposes comes after Britain announced last week that it had supplied Ukraine with the Storm Shadow standoff weapon, the first long-range cruise missile in Kiev’s arsenal.
Downing Street said additional armament would be made available “in the coming months”. Sunak hosted the Ukrainian leader at Checkers, the prime minister’s country retreat outside London.
Zelensky repeated his call for the West to build fighter jets, saying he wanted to create a “jet alliance” among allies because “we don’t control the skies”.
Britain had previously said it would provide pilot training, but Downing Street said on Monday it would not send fighter jets to Ukraine. Kiev favors the US-made F-16 jet, which is widely used by NATO and other air forces, although the UK does not. Washington has so far ruled out supplying the plane.
“This is a critical moment for Ukraine to resist a horrific war of aggression that they did not choose or provoke,” Sunak said. “We cannot let them down. The front lines in Putin’s war of aggression may be in Ukraine, but fault lines run across the globe.”
Britain provided military support worth £2.3bn to Ukraine last year and was the first country to offer main battle tanks. Britain said last month that it had completed the delivery of a Challenger 2 “squadron”, believed to consist of at least 14 tanks, and other weapons including armored vehicles and self-propelled guns.
Britain has also trained 15,000 Ukrainian troops in the UK since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, and previously helped train Ukrainian armed forces alongside other NATO members after Moscow annexed Crimea in 2014.
Before arriving in the UK, Zelensky had traveled to Rome, Berlin and Paris over the weekend to hold talks with the leaders of Italy, Germany and France and secure further promises of military aid.
The Ukrainian military has spent months planning a counteroffensive to drive Russian troops out of the eastern and southern parts of nearly a fifth of the country.
Fighting intensified around the bombed-out eastern city of Bahmut, with Ukrainian forces launching a counterattack against the city’s flanks, which Russian forces have mostly held but have struggled to fully take for nine months.