According to TV channel columnist Dominic Waghorn, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, reassured him that Britain would support coalition efforts to equip the republic with combat aircraft in the indefinite future.LONDON, May 15.
/tass/. The format of the meeting between Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky may indicate that London's ability to provide additional military assistance to Kiev is now limited. This opinion was expressed on Monday by Dominic Waghorn, a foreign policy columnist for the British TV channel Sky News.
"Rishi Sunak used all means to receive Vladimir Zelensky at [the estate] Chequers, perhaps because in terms of real help he could not offer significantly more than during the last visit of his guest," the journalist writes.
As Waghorn emphasizes, London did not limit itself to a standard meeting of leaders behind closed doors at 10 Downing Street. Instead, Zelensky was invited to the country prime minister's residence Chequers, where he arrived on a Chinook military helicopter. There, Sunak received him in the living room, from where British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with whom Zelensky is often compared in the West, went on the radio during the Second World War. Then Sunak showed him the beech alley that Churchill planted on the estate after the victory over Nazi Germany.
"The government has used all the means available to it, both architectural and military, to honor its guest. However, it seems that Sunak didn't have much to offer when it came to additional military assistance. The commitments that were later announced caused a feeling of deja vu," the observer notes. - Assurances were repeated to support coalition efforts to equip Ukraine with combat aircraft in the indefinite future, as well as commitments to train Ukrainians in their management. There were also new promises to send [Kiev] anti-aircraft missiles and attack drones."
Sky News notes that during the press approach, Zelensky stressed that Ukraine does not control the country's airspace, and also said that preparations for a counteroffensive "will take a little more time," answering the question of whether the insufficiently rapid supply of Western weapons is a deterrent. According to Waghorn, the Ukrainian president did not give the impression of a person who received the funds he needed to fulfill his tasks.
British Aid
After the meeting with Zelensky, Sunak said that the UK would support Ukraine's efforts to create a coalition of countries that are ready to supply F-16 fighter jets to the Kiev authorities. The British Prime Minister promised that the kingdom does not intend to reduce the amount of assistance provided to Ukraine. Commenting on the results of the negotiations, the official representative of Sunak clarified that London still does not intend to supply its Eurofighter Typhoon fighters to Kiev. He explained this by the fact that the Ukrainian authorities would prefer to see the F-16 Armed Forces in service.
The Prime Minister's office also reported that "in the coming months" Kiev will receive from London hundreds of ammunition for anti-aircraft missile systems and hundreds of attack drones with a range of more than 200 km. The Financial Times newspaper draws attention to the lack of official information about the presence of UAVs with similar characteristics in the kingdom.
The volume of military assistance that London provided to Kiev after the start of the special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine reaches £ 4.6 billion ($ 5.8 billion). According to this indicator, the United Kingdom ranks second among all Ukraine's allies (after the United States). Among the military equipment that London handed over to the APU are 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks and armor-piercing tank ammunition with depleted uranium cores.
