Zelenskyy meets Burnham as UK offers Stone Cloak system to Ukraine

London,UPDATED: Jul 27, 2026 21:24 IST

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived in England on Monday for talks with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, in a visit the British leader said was meant to show the country's 'unwavering' support for Kyiv. The meeting comes a day before Zelenskyy is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington.

Zelenskyy's trip 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 little foreign policy experience, is the fifth British prime minister to work with Zelenskyy since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

'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. Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he had arrived in Britain for the meeting with Burnham 'as well as with our warriors' in the UK.

The two leaders are due to visit a naval base in Portsmouth on England's south coast and meet more than 200 Ukrainian military personnel who have spent three weeks in Britain on training aimed at improving their fighting capability and mine-countering measures in the Black Sea, the UK government said.

Burnham's office said the UK will give Ukraine the intellectual property behind its new 'Stone Cloak' electronic warfare system, which can jam Russian air defences so drones are not detected. Ukraine has widened its campaign of frequent drone attacks deep inside Russia, targeting oil facilities, military factories and, more recently, logistics centres. The attacks have brought the war closer to ordinary Russians and increased pressure on President Vladimir Putin, even as Russia has stepped up missile and drone strikes on Ukraine.

Russia again attacked Ukraine overnight with 147 long-range drones, according to the Ukrainian air force, which said 123 were intercepted or jammed. In Zaporizhzhia, one person was killed and two others were injured in strikes that damaged a high-rise residential building and several private homes, regional administration head Ivan Fedorov said. In the Kharkiv region, a strike on Balakliia killed one person and injured eight, according to city military administration head Vitalii Karabanov. In the Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk region, strikes damaged a kindergarten, homes and infrastructure, injuring a woman and a six-year-old boy, administration head Oleksandr Hanzha said.

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 each day, but there was no fuel or food crisis. The highway is a key supply route between Kharkiv and central Ukraine. Romania's Ministry of Defense 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 all shot down.

In Moscow, Russia's Defence Ministry said air defences downed 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 and set it on fire. The Ukrainian military also said other 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 that Russia uses for military logistics, along with fuel and supply depots. In Belgorod, near the border with Ukraine, a Ukrainian drone attack injured 12 people, including two children, regional emergency officials said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Ukraine had struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor. In a statement on X on Sunday, Araghchi 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 threats of retaliation as unjustified and groundless, saying Tehran's weapons supplies 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, adding that its references to the UN Charter were 'absurd'. He said Iran was trying to divert attention from Russia's attacks on civilian shipping in the Black Sea, which are due to be discussed at an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Monday.

The visit by Zelenskyy to Britain, the planned meeting with Burnham and the latest exchange of drone attacks underlined the widening military and diplomatic pressure around the war, as Russia and Ukraine traded strikes and Iran vowed a response over the reported attack on its vessel.

With PTI Inputs

- Ends