Andy Burnham will mark his first foreign visit as prime minister with a trip to Kyiv on Monday to reiterate the UK’s support for Ukraine and honour the country’s independence day.<\/p>\n
The prime minister will chair his first meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, set up by the UK and France under his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n
He is also set to accept an award on behalf of the British people recognising the UK’s support for Ukraine and to take part in independence day events.<\/p>\n
Burnham will be reaffirming the UK’s backing for Kyiv in the wake of escalating Russian strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks – including one on a shopping centre on Friday that killed at least 16 people.<\/p>\n
Ahead of Monday’s visit, Burnham said: “On Ukraine’s 35th anniversary of independence, the Ukrainian people should be in no doubt: the UK is behind you today and for as long as it takes.<\/p>\n
“I am proud of the contribution our country has made to Ukraine and I want the Ukrainian people to hear it directly from me that our support will not waver. After all, Ukraine’s security is our security.”<\/p>\n
He said the friendship Ukraine shared with the UK would “long outlast Russia’s illegal war”, adding: “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve. We will not back down until there is a just and lasting peace.”<\/p>\n
It comes after Moscow warned of “consequences” over the use of British drones by Ukraine in its recent ramping up of strikes on Russian infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Kyiv has stepped up long-range attacks on Moscow and other Russian regions, targeting oil refineries and warehouses of the country’s largest online retailer, Wildberries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham will mark his first foreign visit as prime minister with a trip to Kyiv on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747819,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-747818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}