Starmer to hold talks with Zelenskyy & EU leaders over Ukraine support as Russia amps up pressure

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, along with other prominent European leaders, including France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz. According to The Guardian, the three leaders are expected to sit down and express their support for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader will visit the UK with the French president and German chancellor after a week of heightened hostilities. The meeting came just a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected Zelenskyy's proposal to hold face-to-face talks to end the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

For the longest time, the United Kingdom and France were among the strongest allies of Ukraine and have been "willing" to provide security guarantees for the war-torn nation as part of a peace process. On Saturday, Ukraine conducted a massive drone attack, targeting Russia's St Petersburg. No casualties were immediately reported from the incident.

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Meanwhile, in Ukraine, one person was killed and three wounded overnight into Saturday in the Dnipropetrovsk region, as Russian forces struck three districts nearly 30 times with drones and artillery, regional head Oleksandr Hanzha said.

The escalation on both sides came a day after Putin on Friday rejected a proposal by Zelensky for face-to-face talks on the four-year-old war, claiming he saw “no point” in a meeting. However, US President Donald Trump said it would be “great” for the two to meet, but his attention has largely been on talks with Iran.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Starmer condemned Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine in a phone call with Zelensky. The incident killed one person and injured 15 more, including three children, all while Kyiv has repelled hundreds of long-range drones launched by its enemy.

Last month, Starmer r hailed a “generational uplift” in the UK’s defence relationship with Poland as he and his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, signed a new security pact. The UK prime minister said at that time: “There’s no greater challenge for either of our countries than the challenge of Russian aggression, and we see that not just in Ukraine itself, but beyond Ukraine, impacting on our own countries."

“So, that’s the context in which we sign what is actually a generational uplift in the relationship on security and defence between our two countries," he furthered.

With inputs from agencies.