Zelenskyy visits Britain as new PM signals more support for Kyiv
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived Monday (July 27, 2026) in England for a meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a visit the British leader said
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived Monday (July 27, 2026) in England for a meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, a visit the British leader said is intended to signal the country's “unwavering” support for Kyiv. Zelenskyy's visit is the first by a foreign leader since Mr. Burnham took office a week ago. His predecessor, Keir Starmer, was in Kyiv less than two weeks ago in his last overseas trip before leaving office. Burnham will be the fifth British Prime Minister to deal with Mr. Zelenskyy since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve long-lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” said Mr. Burnham, who has spent the past nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester and has little foreign policy experience. The trip to a naval base in Portsmouth on England's south coast comes a day before Mr. Zelenskyy is expected to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington. Zelenskyy posted on X that he had arrived in Britain for the meeting with Mr. Burnham "as well as with our warriors" in the UK. He and Mr. Burnham will meet more than 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have spent three weeks in Britain for an exercise aimed at strengthening their fighting capabilities and measures to counter mines in the Black Sea, the U.K. government said. The U.K. will give Ukraine the intellectual property behind its new “Stone Cloak” electronic warfare system, which is capable of jamming Russian air defenses to stop drones from being detected, Mr. Burnham's office said.
Ukraine has expanded its campaign of frequent drone attacks deep inside Russia that have targeted oil facilities, military factories and, most recently, logistical centers, bringing the war home to millions of Russians and raising pressure on President Vladimir Putin. The raids have shattered Mr. Putin's narrative of the conflict as something that doesn't affect the lives of ordinary people in his country. But he has remained undeterred, and Russia has ramped up its aerial campaign, regularly bombarding Ukraine with missiles and drones. Russia and Ukraine exchange more drone attacks Russia again attacked Ukraine overnight with 147 long-range drones, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said it intercepted or jammed 123 of them. In Zaporizhzhia, one person was killed and two injured in attacks on the city that damaged a high-rise residential building and several private residences overnight, according to regional administration head Ivan Fedorov. A Russian strike on the town of Balakliia in the Kharkiv region killed one person and wounded eight, according to Vitalii Karabanov, head of the city military administration. In the Nikopol district of the Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian strikes damaged a kindergarten, residential buildings and infrastructure, injuring a woman and a 6-year-old boy, according to administration head Oleksandr Hanzha. In the eastern Kharkiv region, a regional council member said Russian forces destroyed every gas station along the highway between Kharkiv and Poltava, a distance of about 150 kilometres (93 miles). Oleksandr Skoryk said the situation is becoming more critical daily, but the region is not facing a fuel or food crisis.
The BriefWire