Rishi Sunak will meet President Zelensky this morning, as Western leaders try to ease his disappointment over the decision not to give Ukraine a firm timeline for joining Nato.
The prime minister is attending the Nato leaders’ summit in Vilnius, where a joint communique fell short of Zelensky’s hopes of a firmer invitation to join the alliance.
Zelensky denounced the “absurd” decision not to give Ukraine a timeline as he was met by rapturous crowds in the Lithuanian capital, which was part of the Soviet Union until 1990.
Ukraine will be given new security assurances as part of a deal signed with G7 countries. Sunak has announced a new package of military aid for Ukraine that will include over 70 combat and logistics vehicles, as well as a new batch of shells tipped with depleted uranium to use in Challenger 2 tanks. President Putin has previously said Russia would be “forced to react” if the UK gave armour-piercing shells to Ukraine.
Sunak said: “As Ukraine makes strategic progress in their counteroffensive, and the degradation of Russian forces begins to infect Putin’s front line, we are stepping up our formal arrangements to protect Ukraine for the long term.