Starmer arrived in Ukraine's capital on Thursday with a pledge to help guarantee the country’s security for a century, days before Donald Trump is sworn in as US president.
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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Kyiv, where he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will sign a so-called “100-Year Partnership” treaty.
Pledging to help guarantee Ukraine's security for a century, the treaty covers areas including defence, science, energy and trade.
Starmer’s unannounced visit is his first trip to Ukraine since he took office in July. He visited the country in 2023 as the opposition leader and has twice held talks with Zelenskyy in 10 Downing Street since becoming prime minister.
Starmer was greeted at Kyiv railway station by the UK ambassador to Ukraine, Martin Harris and Ukraine’s envoy to London, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
During the visit, Starmer and Zelenskyy laid flowers at a wall of remembrance for those killed in the war. The wall outside St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, a Kyiv landmark, is covered in photos of the slain, stretching for a city block. It has become a place of pilgrimage for families paying tribute to their lost loved ones.
Starmer also visited a Kyiv hospital specialising in burn treatment.
While Starmer was later meeting with Zelenskyy at the presidential palace, a car and a building were damaged elsewhere in Kyiv by debris from Russian drones shot down by Ukraine's air defenses, according to city adminstration chief Tymur Tkachenko.
The UK is one of Ukraine’s biggest military backers, having pledged 12.8 billion pounds in military and civilian aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago.
It has also trained more than 50,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil. Starmer is due to announce another £40 million (€47.4m) for Ukraine’s post-war economic recovery.
On Thursday, Starmer announced that the UK will deliver a new mobile air defence system to Ukraine, which will be designed by Britain and funded by Denmark. He also said the UK will continue to train Ukrainian troops.
But the UK’s role is dwarfed by that of the United States, and there is deep uncertainty over the fate of American support for Ukraine once Donald Trump takes office on 20 January. The US president-elect says he wants to bring the war to a swift end and is planning to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom he has long expressed admiration.
Kyiv’s allies have rushed to flood Ukraine with as much support as possible before Trump’s inauguration, intending to put Ukraine in the strongest position possible for any future negotiations to end the war.
Zelenskyy has said that in any peace negotiation, Ukraine would need assurances about its future protection from Russia. Britain says its 100-year pledge is part of that assurance and will help ensure Ukraine is “never again vulnerable to the kind of brutality inflicted on it by Russia.”
Taking the friendship 'to the next level'
The deal commits the two sides to cooperate on defence — especially maritime security against Russian activity in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov — and on technology projects, including drones, which have become vital weapons for both sides in the war. The treaty also includes a system to help track stolen Ukrainian grain exported by Russia from occupied parts of the country.
“Putin’s ambition to wrench Ukraine away from its closest partners has been a monumental strategic failure. Instead, we are closer than ever, and this partnership will take that friendship to the next level,” Starmer said ahead of the visit.
“This 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,” he added.
Zelenskyy says he and Starmer will also discuss a plan proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron that would see troops from France and other Western countries stationed in Ukraine to oversee a ceasefire agreement.
Zelenskyy has said any such proposal should go alongside a timeline for Ukraine to join NATO. The alliance’s 32 member countries say that Ukraine will enter one day, but not until after the war.
So far, Trump has appeared to sympathise with Putin’s position that Ukraine should not be part of NATO.