Rishi Sunak across the board: after ordering joint attacks with the US on the Houthis in Yemen overnight, the British prime minister reached Kyiv to announce 2.9 billion in new aid to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and sign an "unprecedented" bilateral agreement on security guarantees to Ukraine, the first G7 country to do so after all the nations in the group had promised to sign similar agreements at the NATO summit in Vilnius lo last year.
The British prime minister thus tries to fill a gap that remains in the West on military assistance for the invaded country, and to give a positive signal after the disheartening announcement by the White House of the end of American funds and the consequent stop to supplies to Kiev.
Putin's superhawk, Dmitry Medvedev, immediately replied sharply to the British "eternal enemies": "I hope they understand that the deployment of their official military contingent in Ukraine will mean a declaration of war on our country," said the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council. An option, that of British troops on the ground, which in any case is not contemplated in the agreement.
The new £2.5 billion package - about €2.9 billion - "is the largest since the start of the war" provided by London and includes "hundreds of drones" to be delivered in the coming months, Sunak explained. This is "a strong signal" to both Kyiv and Moscow, the Tory prime minister stressed, that to help Kyiv "we must do more": hesitating about aid to Ukraine would only "encourage" Vladimir Putin and his allies in North Korea and Iran. The new British support is included in the bilateral pact signed by the two leaders in Kiev and defined by Zelensky as "a watershed moment in European history".
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The United Kingdom will continue to support Ukraine for the ten-year duration of this agreement", reads the text of the agreement that will remain in force - they explain from Kiev - until the hoped-for entry of Ukraine into NATO.
In the document, the defense chapter explains that the two sides "will work together to ensure a sustainable force capable of defending Ukraine now and deterring Russian aggression in the future, through the continued provision of security assistance and modern military equipment" prioritizing "air defense, artillery and long-range firepower." The agreement also provides for British support for the development of "modern armed forces" in Ukraine and the Kyiv navy, with an eye on tensions in the Black Sea. In addition to defence, other points of the agreement concern guarantees of financial and humanitarian support, protection of critical infrastructure, intelligence cooperation and cybersecurity, and the fight against propaganda.
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