UK to Supply Ukraine with Over 5,000 Additional Air Defence Missiles

In addition to the £2.2 billion loan to Ukraine announced the day before, the UK will allocate another £1.6 billion for missiles for Ukraine to be manufactured in the UK. This was announced by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a press conference after the European leaders' summit on Ukraine in London, The Guardian reports.

‘The UK will supply Ukraine with over 5,000 more air defence missiles to protect people and infrastructure from attack. The deal fulfils the UK's commitment to Ukraine and will create hundreds of jobs here in the UK,’ the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

According to Starmer, it will be vital for the protection of critical infrastructure and will strengthen Ukraine's ability to secure peace. 

‘We must learn from the mistakes of the past. We cannot accept a weak agreement like Minsk that Russia can easily violate,’ Starmer said.

He also added that he had called the meeting in London to ‘unite our partners around efforts to strengthen Ukraine and support a just and lasting peace for the benefit of all of us’.

‘Our starting point must be to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position now so that it can negotiate from a position of strength, and we are redoubling our support,’ he said.

The British prime minister added that the leaders agreed to continue military aid and increase economic pressure on Russia, and they would insist that Ukraine be at the peace talks table, and confirmed plans to assemble a ‘coalition of the willing’ to enforce any peace deal in which the UK would play a leading role.