Zelenskyy meets Burnham as UK unveils Stone Cloak support for Ukraine

London,UPDATED: Jul 27, 2026 19:46 IST

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet British Prime Minister Andy Burnham at a naval base in England on Monday, in a visit the UK leader said is meant to show the country’s “unwavering” support for Kyiv. The trip comes a day before Zelenskyy is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington.

Zelenskyy’s visit is the first by a foreign leader since Burnham took office a week ago. Burnham, who has spent the past nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester and has limited foreign policy experience, will become the fifth British prime minister to deal with Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

During the visit to Portsmouth on England’s south coast, Zelenskyy and Burnham will meet more than 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have spent the past three weeks in Britain. The UK government said they have been taking part in an exercise aimed at strengthening their fighting capability and countering mines in the Black Sea. Burnham’s office also said the UK will give Ukraine the intellectual property behind its new “Stone Cloak” electronic warfare system, which can jam Russian air defences to stop drones from being detected. “Russia should be in no doubt of our resolve, and we will not back down until we achieve long lasting and just peace for Ukraine,” Burnham said.

The visit comes as both sides continue to exchange drone attacks. Ukraine has stepped up long-range strikes inside Russia, targeting oil facilities, military factories and logistical centres, while Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Overnight, Russia attacked Ukraine with 147 long-range drones, the Ukrainian air force said, adding that 123 were intercepted or jammed. In Zaporizhzhia, one person was killed and two were injured in strikes that damaged a high-rise residential building and private homes, according to regional administration head Ivan Fedorov. In Balakliia in the Kharkiv region, one person was killed and eight were wounded, city military administration head Vitalii Karabanov said. In the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk, a woman and a six-year-old boy were injured, while a kindergarten, homes and infrastructure were damaged, according to administration head Oleksandr Hanzha.

In the Kharkiv region, regional council member Oleksandr Skoryk said Russian forces had destroyed every petrol station along the highway between Kharkiv and Poltava, a route of about 150 kilometres. He said the situation was becoming more critical by the day, but there was no fuel or food crisis. Romania’s Ministry of Defence said a drone briefly entered its airspace before crossing back into Ukraine, where explosions were later reported, and added that two F-16 fighter jets were deployed to monitor the airspace. It said this was the fourth such incident in as many days, with the previous three drones having been shot down.

In Moscow, Russia’s Defence Ministry said its air defences shot down 276 Ukrainian drones overnight. Rostov regional Governor Yuri Slyusar said five people, including a child, were killed when a Ukrainian drone hit an apartment building in Rostov-on-Don. Ukraine’s military General Staff said its forces struck an export terminal in Rostov-on-Don, setting it on fire. The Ukrainian military also said strikes in the Russian-held part of the Kherson region hit a ground relay station used to control drones and a bridge over the Henichesk Strait used by Russia for military logistics, and that Russian fuel and supply depots were also struck. In Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone attack injured 12 people, including two children, regional emergency officials said.

The latest fighting was followed by a diplomatic row involving Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Ukraine had struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor. In a post on X on Sunday, he called it a “blatant UN Charter violation done at Israel’s behest to drag Europe into its war” and said he had made clear in calls with European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that the attack “can’t go unanswered”. Zelenskyy said Ukrainian long-range strikes in the Caspian Sea over the weekend had achieved “very good results” and that the targets included “vessels involved in transporting military cargo linked to Iran, as well as a warship”. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected Iran’s threat of retaliation as unjustified and groundless, saying Tehran’s supplies of weapons to Russia had made it a direct accomplice to Moscow’s aggression. “Iran has no standing to pretend to be a victim,” he posted on X, and called its references to the UN Charter “absurd”. He added that Iran was trying to divert attention from Russia’s attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea, which he said would be discussed at an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Monday.

Zelenskyy’s UK visit, including fresh military support and a meeting with Ukrainian troops in Britain, comes against the backdrop of rising drone warfare, continued strikes on both sides and a widening diplomatic dispute after Ukraine’s reported attack on a vessel linked to Iran.

With PTI Inputs

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