KYIV
\nBritish Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Kyiv on Thursday on an unannounced visit to sign a \u201c100-year accord\u201d and shore up support for Ukraine ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House. It is Starmer\u2019s first official visit to Kyiv since taking office in July, and comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds a flurry of meetings with his country\u2019s allies ahead of Trump\u2019s return next week.
\nStarmer was greeted at Kyiv railway station by UK ambassador to Ukraine Martin Harris.The prime minister is expected to sign a \u201clandmark 100-year partnership to deepen security ties\u201d between the UK and Ukraine and meet with Zelensky, Downing Street said in a statement. \u201cPutin\u2019s ambition to wrench Ukraine away from its closest partners has been a monumental strategic failure,\u201d Starmer said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
\n\u201cInstead, we are closer than ever, and this partnership will take that friendship to the next level,\u201d he said of the accord.The deal commits the two sides to cooperate on defence and battlefield technology, such as drones, while implementing a system to help locate grain from occupied parts of Ukraine exported by Russia.
\n\u201cThis is not just about the here and now, it is also about an investment in our two countries for the next century, bringing together technology development, scientific advances and cultural exchanges, and harnessing the phenomenal innovation shown by Ukraine in recent years for generations to come,\u201d added Starmer. He is also expected to announce an extra \u00a340 million to aid Ukraine\u2019s post-war economic recovery.
\nZelensky had earlier said that he and Starmer would discuss the possibility of having Western troops stationed in Ukraine to oversee a ceasefire agreement, a divisive proposal initially put forward by French President Emmanuel Macron.The UK has been one of Ukraine\u2019s biggest military backers, pledging \u00a312.8 billion ($16 billion) in military and civilian aid since Russia invaded three years ago.
\nThe US remains by far Ukraine\u2019s biggest financial backer, but that looks set to change when Trump arrives.His nominee for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Wednesday that the new administration would instead seek \u201cbold diplomacy\u201d to end the war. \u201cThere will have to be concessions made by the Russian Federation, but also by the Ukrainians,\u201d he said. Trump has previously vowed to end the war within a day, with his aides speaking of leveraging US assistance to Ukraine to force it into territorial concessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Kyiv on Thursday on an unannounced visit to sign a \u201c100-year accord\u201d and shore up support for Ukraine ahead of Donald Trump\u2019s return to the White House. It is Starmer\u2019s first official visit to Kyiv since taking office in July, and comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":75737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75775,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75760\/revisions\/75775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}