Zelenskyy at Downing Street for talks with Starmer and ‘coalition of willing’ after meeting King Charles
By Guardian - 24 October - 12.53 BST
Volodymyr Zelenskyy set to press case for using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defences.
Zelenskyy arrives at Downing Street
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived at Downing Street on Friday to meet prime minister Keir Starmer, and join other European leaders on a “coalition of the willing” call to discuss boosting Ukraine’s defences.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the UK for its support and said Vladimir Putin was pushing Ukraine towards “humanitarian disaster”.
At the top of a bilateral meeting with UK prime minister Keir Starmer, the Ukrainian president said:
Yes, I agree with you and know that Putin doesn’t show that he wants to stop the war.
He said Russian aggression was “pushing us with such humanitarian disaster” with attacks targeting infrastructure including Ukraine’s energy sector.
“We’re thankful to you that we are not alone in this situation - from the very beginning of war but especially now, it’s very important,” Zelenskyy said.
Keir Starmer said “huge steps forward” had been taken this week to support Ukraine but there was “further we can do” on long-range capability as he described the UK as Kyiv’s “closest supporter and ally.”
At the start of a bilateral meeting with the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the British prime minister said:
Volodymyr, it’s really good to be able to welcome you here in Downing Street again for a really important meeting between the two of us, bilaterally, but also for the coalition of the willing.
He added:
Through seeing his majesty, through our meeting and through the coalition of the willing, we reaffirm again our support for you and Ukraine and our absolute commitment to meeting the challenge of Russian aggression.
And whilst you have signalled the path for a way forward and shown that willingness of courage and determination, what we see from Putin is an absolute unwillingness to engage, in fact, the opposite, which is the continued attacks increasingly on civilians and on children and sadly I have to offer you my condolences again, as I did the last time we met and the time before, for those terrible losses.
I do think that this week we can really bear down on Russian oil and gas. Huge steps forward this week already. I think there’s further we can do on capability, particularly... long-range capability, and of course, the vital work for coalition of the willing when it comes to the security guarantees that are necessary.
So we’ve got really important business to go through with the coalition of the willing today, but it’s very good to be able to welcome you back.
Four dead, 12 wounded in blast at Ukraine train station
A man detonated an explosive device as border guards checked documents at a railway station in northern Ukraine on Friday, killing himself and three women, the State Border Guard Service said.
It said in a statement that 12 other people were hurt in the blast at the station in Ovruch, close to the border with Belarus, and that a border guard was among the dead, who were aged 29, 58 and 82.
The man who detonated the explosive device was a 23-year-old resident of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine who had recently been detained for trying to cross the border, it said.
It made no mention of any link with Russia’s war in Ukraine
Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries drive fuel price rise in Tajikistan, Reuters reports
Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries are partly responsible for a rise in fuel prices in Tajikistan, three sources in the Central Asian country’s government told Reuters on Friday.
“There is currently a gasoline shortage on the market, which has led to higher prices”, said a source in the Tajik government’s anti-monopoly service.
The source said that contracted supplies from Russian producers were not arriving, linking it to strikes on Russian refineries that provide for many of Tajikistan’s fuel needs. Two other sources agreed.
Reuters monitoring on Friday showed that fuel prices in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, had risen significantly since the beginning of October. The A-95 grade has risen by 3.54%, the AI-92 grade by 3.68%, diesel by 5.58%, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) by 5.81%.
One of the sources said that prices were even higher outside the capital.
All five of Central Asia’s former Soviet republics, whose economies are tightly linked to Russia’s, have been rocked since 2022 by the economic fallout of Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
King Charles meets Zelenskyy at Windsor
King Charles hosted president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Windsor on Friday, ahead of the Ukrainian leader’s latest talks with European leaders in London on how to increase pressure on Russia.
It was the third time this year the 76-year-old monarch has hosted Zelenskyy, with the Ukrainian leader given a royal salute and his country’s national anthem played as he arrived at Windsor Castle, west of London.
Zelensky next heads to Downing Street to meet prime minister Keir Starmer, before joining other European leaders on a so-called coalition of the willing call to discuss boosting Ukraine’s defences.
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Zelenskyy to meet Starmer and ‘coalition of the willing’ to discuss further military support
Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelenskyy will travel to London on Friday for a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” hosted by prime minister Kier Starmer. Starmer intends to make the case for using frozen assets to fund Ukraine’s defences.
Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told LBC:
We want to try and take Russian oil and gas off the global market.
We want also to finish the job on the frozen Russian sovereign assets, essentially so we can use the them to unlock billions of pounds to fund Ukraine’s defences and, thirdly, supplying long-range capabilities.
By that, I mean missiles to Ukraine going into the winter months, which obviously has jobs benefits here in the United Kingdom as well.
But fundamentally it is about that message to Putin and action to ramp up the pressure. Because it is Putin who is playing for time, Putin who is the one who is not coming to the table and engaging.
In other developments:
Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever said on Thursday that his country needs concrete and solid guarantees before supporting a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund a giant loan to Kyiv, pointing out that the plan is “uncharted territory”. Belgium’s position is critical, as the assets in question are held by Belgian financial institution Euroclear. “Can this (plan) be legal?
That is a very good question … There are no clear answers,” De Wever told reporters after attending an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday. “We will in any case be buried in litigation. That seems like a certainty.”
EU leaders did not reach an agreement on how to handle the frozen assets during the summit. The issue will be discussed further at the next EU summit in December.
- An overnight Ukrainian drone attack injured a young boy and four others in a Moscow suburb, Russian officials said Friday. The drone hit an apartment on the 14th floor of a residential building in Krasnogorsk, the governor of the Moscow region, Andrey Vorobyov, said on Telegram. Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile said it had downed 111 Ukrainian drones.
- Germany’s economy minister begins a visit to Ukraine on Friday to discuss how Berlin can bolster the country’s defences as its energy infrastructure confronts intensifying Russian attacks.
- Hungary is working on finding a way to “circumvent” US sanctions on Russian oil companies, prime minister Viktor Orbán said in an interview with state radio Kossuth on Friday. Orban also said that he has talked to Hungary’s oil and gas company MOL on the topic. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia for the first time in his second term, targeting Lukoil and Rosneft, signifying a major shift in his approach to ending the war.
- Vladimir Putin has said Russia will never bow to US pressure but conceded new sanctions could cause some economic pain, as China and India were reported to be scaling back Russian oil imports after Washington targeted Moscow’s two largest producers. The Russian leader on Thursday described the US sanctions as an “unfriendly act that does nothing to strengthen Russian-American relations” and “an attempt to put pressure on Russia”, which he said was futile. “No self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure,” Putin added in comments to Russian journalists.
