Ukraine's Zelenskyy gets warm welcome in UK after Trump clash

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy received a warm welcome in the UK after a clash with President Donald Trump.
• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other European leaders expressed strong support for Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy is set to meet King Charles, highlighting UK's backing for Ukraine.

LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer greeted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a warm embrace on Saturday after the Ukrainian leader flew to London for talks following his clash at the White House with President Donald Trump.

In an extraordinary Oval Office meeting on Friday, Trump threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine, three years after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.

In London, a crowd cheered as Zelenskyy arrived for talks with Starmer at his Downing Street office before a summit of European leaders that the Ukrainian president will attend on Sunday to discuss a peace plan for Ukraine.

"I hope you heard some of that cheering in the street. That is the people of the United Kingdom coming out to demonstrate how much they support you ... and our absolute determination to stand with you," Starmer told him.

Starmer told Zelenskyy he had "full backing across the United Kingdom."

"We stand with you and Ukraine for as long as it may take," Starmer said.

Other European leaders also issued messages of support for Zelenskyy and Ukraine after his meeting with Trump, highlighting differences between traditional allies the United States and Europe over the war since Trump returned to office.

Starmer spoke to both Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday, and French President Emmanuel Macron also visited Trump in Washington this week.

Zelenskyy is also due to meet King Charles on Sunday. Britain's Sun newspaper said the meeting would take place at the monarch's Sandringham estate in eastern England.

"I'm very happy that his majesty the king accepted my meeting tomorrow," Zelenskyy told Starmer at the start of their meeting.

Britain has been a vocal backer of Ukraine and Charles has previously expressed his support for Zelenskyy, speaking of the "determination and strength" of the Ukrainian people in the face of an unprovoked attack from Russia.

During Starmer's visit to the White House, he presented Trump with a written invitation from the king for a state visit, which would make the U.S. president the first elected political leader in modern times to be hosted for two state visits by a British monarch.

Photos

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Related topics

PoliticsWorld
Sachin Ravikumar, Pavel Polituk, and Ronald Popeski