Kyiv, 18 June 2022 ( TDI): British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew out to Ukraine to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, where he launched a major training operation for Ukrainian armed forces with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the UK’s landmark program could fundamentally change the equation of the war, ensuring the armed forces of Ukraine have the resilience they need to fight the Russian forces of President Vladimir Putin.
The main agenda of the meeting was to discuss the situation in Ukraine and how the latest UK-led program would train and drill the armed forces of Ukraine using battle-proven British Army expertise, allowing them to accelerate their deployment, rebuild their forces, and scale up their resistance.
In the meeting, UK Prime Minister said to Zelenskyy, “Ukrainian soldiers fire British missiles in defense of your nation’s sovereignty, they do so also in defense of the very freedoms we take for granted.”
“That is why I have offered President Zelenskyy a major new military training program that could change the equation of this war –harnessing that most powerful of forces, the Ukrainian determination to win,” he said further.
Role of the UK in the Ukraine crisis
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the UK provided Ukraine substantial support in the form of defensive military aid (including around 2,000 anti-tank missile systems), humanitarian aid, and retaliatory economic sanctions against Russia.
Before this, it had trained around 22,000 Ukrainians as part of operation orbital. The Royal Air Force also flew surveillance aircraft to collect intelligence on Russian ground movements.
On 18 March 2022, Ukrainian respondents voted the UK the third most-supportive country of Ukraine after Poland and Lithuania in a poll carried out by Rating Group. High-level contact is also frequent between the two countries since the beginning of the war.
In response to the Russian military build-up proceeding the invasion, on 17 February 2022, the UK, Poland, and Ukraine agreed to a British -Polish- Ukraine trilateral pact to strengthen strategic cooperation between the three countries.
