Outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer concluded his final official visit to Ukraine with a resounding declaration of confidence in the country’s ultimate victory against Russia, reinforcing that the impending political transition in London will not erode the United Kingdom’s steadfast support.
Meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the capital on Thursday, Starmer sought to cement his foreign policy legacy by framing the conflict not merely as a war of attrition, but as a showcase of modern military sophistication. Speaking to Sky News in a valedictory interview, the British leader lauded the strategic and operational capabilities of the defenders, asserting his firm conviction that the Kremlin’s campaign is destined to fail.
“I believe Ukraine will win this war,” Starmer stated unequivocally. “What they’ve shown is that it’s not just the size of your army, it’s how you fight a modern conflict. And so they are probably the most effective fighting machine in Europe.”
Enduring Alliances Beyond Political Shifts
The high-profile trip occurred on Starmer’s final full day as leader of the Labour Party, signalling an imminent handover of power in Downing Street. Amid anxieties in Kyiv regarding whether a change in British leadership might signal a broader recalculation of Western military commitments, Starmer utilised the joint platform to guarantee absolute policy continuity.
The British leader dismissed any notions that the political transition would alter the geopolitical alignment between London and Kyiv. He emphasised that institutional support for Ukraine remains deeply embedded within the British political consensus, transcending individual administrations or electoral cycles.
“The fact that there will be a new prime minister in the United Kingdom, in the days to come, doesn’t change that dynamic at all,” Starmer reassured officials and reporters. “The resolve of the United Kingdom remains the same; it will not waver.
A Multimillion-Euro Aerial Upgrade
Beyond the diplomatic assurances, the outgoing prime minister backed his rhetoric with a substantial new defence package aimed at modernising Ukraine’s long-term aerial defence architecture. Starmer announced a 300 million-euro funding initiative dedicated to facilitating the procurement and delivery of a squadron of 16 advanced Swedish-built Gripen fighter jets.
The strategic acquisition, slated for complete delivery by 2029, represents a critical component of Ukraine’s efforts to transition away from Soviet-era hardware toward standardised Western platforms. The multi-role Gripen aircraft are highly regarded by defence analysts for their versatility, engineered specifically to execute demanding air-to-air combat operations, precision ground strikes, and comprehensive reconnaissance missions under heavily contested electronic warfare conditions.
By anchoring this multi-year financial agreement on the eve of his departure, Starmer has effectively locked in the United Kingdom’s defence trajectory, ensuring that British resources will continue to fortify the Ukrainian military apparatus well into the conclusion of the decade.
A Government Reshuffle in Ukraine Meets Public Backlash
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky shook up his wartime government this week, drawing thousands into the streets across Ukraine in protest of his decision to remove Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, a young official widely credited as the architect of the country’s battlefield drone program.
More than a thousand demonstrators gathered in Kyiv’s central square, waving Ukrainian and European Union flags and chanting “shame” and “bring Fedorov back,” a rare public display of dissent in a country that has largely rallied behind its wartime leadership for more than four years.
The personnel overhaul marked Ukraine’s fourth government reshuffle since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, and came alongside the removal of Prime Minister-level officials as part of a broader restructuring.
Zelensky, who has remained in office under martial law because wartime elections are prohibited, announced the changes on Sunday, saying “Ukraine is changing its political strategy” and that each priority area of foreign policy would be assigned to a specific person “with substantial experience who is capable of implementing what we agree on at the leaders’ level and what the Ukrainian people expect.”
Fedorov had been seen as an innovator behind the country’s successful drone technology but had reportedly clashed with the traditional military establishment, a tension that appears to have factored into his removal.
In the reshuffle’s aftermath, Zelensky moved to install Yevhenii Khmara, the acting head of Ukraine’s SBU security service, as acting defence minister, asking parliament to formally approve the appointment.
Writing on Telegram, Zelensky said the SBU had “distinguished itself” in staging long-range strikes on Russia, framing that record as an asset for the ministry’s next chapter.
Separately, Zelensky dismissed Tymur Tkachenko, who had served as head of the Kyiv city military administration overseeing the capital’s defence as it remains under near-daily Russian attack, in a move made under Ukraine’s martial law provisions that has not yet been publicly explained.
The reshuffle now stands as a test of Zelensky’s political authority as the war approaches its four-and-a-half-year mark.
Deep Strikes Reshape The Battlefield
The domestic upheaval in Kyiv comes as Ukraine’s expanding campaign of long-range drone and missile strikes against Russian oil production, refining and export infrastructure, as well as against Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s so-called “second capital,” has become one of the most consequential developments of the war’s later phase.
Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as Russian prime minister under Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2004 before going into exile and landing on a Kremlin list of alleged “extremists and terrorists,” told ABC News on the sidelines of a Chatham House conference in London that the strikes have fundamentally altered how ordinary Russians experience the war.
“In the spring and now, of course, Ukraine changed their attitude,” Kasyanov said. “They have an advantage in long-range missiles, and they have an advantage in drones.”
He added that Ukraine has “gradually… moved the war from being an ‘accident’ somewhere, an emergency case somewhere in the corner of Russia, to Russia, even to Moscow. And that is quite a significant change.”
Kasyanov said that shift, combined with a widening Russian budget deficit that reached 2.5 per cent of GDP last month according to preliminary Finance Ministry data, and reported public anxiety over spreading fuel shortages, is beginning to erode the image of stability and security that Putin has built his rule around.
“There is nothing on this, no stability and no security,” Kasyanov said, adding that sentiment is shifting even among Russia’s urban middle class, “who in fact, could in any country be a driving force for any changes.”
He argued that consistent Western pressure could force a genuine shift in Kremlin behaviour by year’s end. “It could happen by the end of the year if consistent pressure continues,” Kasyanov said.
Kremlin Pushes Back On Economic Strain
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov acknowledged some of the economic pressure this week, telling reporters that Russia’s rate of growth is currently “insufficient,” though he attributed the slowdown to broader global conditions rather than the war itself, describing the international backdrop as being in a “rather dire state.”
Kasyanov was sceptical of that framing, saying continued sanctions and Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s oil sector would compound the Kremlin’s difficulties. “By the end of the year, he will face a big problem,” Kasyanov said of Putin.
The military and political turbulence has unfolded even as diplomatic contacts between Washington, Moscow and Kyiv continue. US President Trump told Fox News this week that he believes Putin is “ready to make a deal,” possibly soon, describing his direct message to the Russian leader: “I tell him the same thing all the time. I don’t want to go into great detail, but I say: ‘Vladimir, it’s time for you to stop. It’s time for this war to end.'”
Kasyanov, however, argued that Moscow has largely failed to capitalise on diplomatic openings with Washington, including the August 2025 Anchorage summit between Trump and Putin, which the Kremlin had hoped would produce a lasting rupture in transatlantic unity.
“What Putin wanted was to divide transatlantic unity, dreaming of what they call the ‘Anchorage spirit,'” Kasyanov said, arguing that Washington has had a “wrong understanding of the whole problem” in its dealings with the Kremlin.
Despite the tensions surrounding Kyiv’s leadership reshuffle, Western military support has not wavered. Trump said last week, following a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky, that Ukraine would be permitted to produce its own Patriot surface-to-air interceptors domestically, a development Kasyanov said is being closely watched in Moscow. “That is, I think, creating a shock in Moscow,” he said of the continued Western backing for Kyiv.
