British Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine (Picture: @UkrEmbLondon)
Downing Street said the visit was a ‘show of solidarity’ with Ukraine.
A No 10 spokesman said the prime minister was using the visit to set out a new package of financial and military aid.
‘The prime minister has travelled to Ukraine to meet President Zelensky in person, in a show of solidarity with the Ukrainian people,’ the spokesman said.
‘They will discuss the UK’s long term support to Ukraine and the PM will set out a new package of financial and military aid.’
Ukrainian politicians welcomed the meeting. Former minister Volodymyr Omelyan tweeted ‘Boris Johnson in Kyiv,’ alongside a heart emoji.
Meanwhile the deputy head of Zelensky’s administration, Andij Sybiha, described Mr Johnson on Facebook as ‘the leader in the anti-war coalition…leader in sanctions on Russian aggressor’.
He said the two leaders were having a ‘one to one’ to discuss Ukraine’s defence against Russia.
It comes after Mr Johnson pledged to send £100m worth of high grade military weapons to Ukraine, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weaponry and so-called ‘suicide drones’, which loiter over the battlefield before attacking their target.
Ukraine is preparing for a bloody battle in the east after Putin’s forces withdrew from the Kyiv region – leaving being evidence of mass killings and atrocities on a scale not seen since World War Two.
As the west imposed more sanctions over the massacre, rape and torture of civilians in Bucha, Russia launched a rocket attack on civilians fleeing Kramatorsk rail station in Donetsk – killing 50 people.
Mr Johnson said the strike on the eastern transport hub was ‘unconscionable’ and showed the ‘depths to which Putin’s once-vaunted army had sunk’.
At a joint press conference in Downing Street with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on Friday he said the Europe we knew six weeks ago ‘no longer exists’.
However he said Putin had ‘succeeded in uniting Europe and the whole transatlantic alliance in support of Ukraine and in solidarity with each other’.
The missile on Friday hit Kramatorsk station as thousands of women and children tried to flee west before the Russian advance arrives.
Zelensky has called on the international community to hold to account the Russian forces guilty of what he said was a war crime.
‘All world efforts will be directed to establish every minute of who did what, who gave what orders, where the missile came from, who transported it, who gave the command and how this strike was agreed,’ Mr Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the attack, but western officials believe it was probably a Russian Tochka-U missile, which Nato refers to as a SS-21, which was fired indiscriminately towards the town centre.
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Source:metro.co.uk/2022/04/09