Rishi Sunak has backed plans to send Ukraine billions of pounds in interest from frozen Russian assets as world leaders gathered in Kyiv to mark the second anniversary of the war.
In an article for The Sunday Times, the prime minister also said that he wanted to be “bolder” in seizing the assets themselves. He described it as a fitting tribute to Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in mysterious circumstances in an Arctic penal colony this month.
Sunak urged the United States to continue to support the war-torn country after the Republicans blocked President Biden’s emergency $50 billion funding package.
In a rallying call to the West, Sunak wrote: “We should never underestimate what America has done for Ukraine and for Euro-Atlantic security. I urge them to continue that support, and I am confident they will.
“Because we know that if Putin wins in Ukraine, the very basis of the rules-based order will have been challenged to its core. That’s why Putin’s Russia continues to pose the greatest threat to global security we face today.
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“So we must be bolder with our military support — providing Ukraine with more long-range weapons, more drones, and more munitions. We must be bolder in hitting the Russian war economy … And we must be bolder in seizing the hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets.”
In recent weeks Foreign Office officials have held meetings to discuss legal routes to seizing Russian central bank reserves, which have been immobilised in the West since February 2022.
As the world marked the second anniversary of the biggest incursion into a European country since the Second World War, the King praised Ukrainians’ determination and strength in the face of Russian aggression.
“I have felt this personally in the many meetings I have had with Ukrainians since the start of the war, from President Zelensky and Mrs Zelenska, to new army recruits training here in the United Kingdom,” he said.
“I continue to be greatly encouraged that the United Kingdom and our allies remain at the forefront of international efforts to support Ukraine at this time of such great suffering and need.”
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Zelensky tried to rally the Ukrainian people, declaring they would triumph. “We have been fighting for this for 730 days of our lives. We will win on the greatest day of our lives. Any normal person wants the war to end. But none of us will allow Ukraine to end,” he said.
A Russian drone attack struck a residential building in the southern city of Odesa, killing at least one person. Ukrainian forces withdrew from the strategic eastern city of Avdiivka at the weekend, where they had battled a fierce Russian assault for four months despite being heavily outnumbered and outgunned.
Kyiv has kept up strikes behind the front line but moved to a defensive posture amid critical shortages on the battlefield.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, Georgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, Alexander De Croo, the Belgian prime minister, and Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, were in Kyiv at the weekend. Meloni and Trudeau signed a new security pact with Ukraine similar to the one agreed by Sunak in January.
Boris Johnson, who forged a close political alliance with Zelensky during his time in office, also visited and posted a picture of himself meeting the president. He listed the Ukrainians’ achievements, adding: “They need more weapons now.”
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Despite Sunak’s commitment, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, is likely to have a request for an increase to the Ministry of Defence’s budget of between £2 billion and £4 billion rejected by Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, who is keen to use his financial headroom to cut taxes in the March 6 budget.
Treasury insiders say the MoD has been allocated an extra £11 billion over five years, more than any other Whitehall department.
