Zelensky is strengthening his alliance with London even further and is facing a less hostile Trump

Yesterday afternoon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in the UK to meet Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the naval base in Portsmouth and discuss the ‘special relationship’ between Kyiv and London – a very special one indeed – covering military agreements, joint exercises, and the sharing of military technology and intelligence, before travelling on to Washington to meet Donald Trump and attend the funeral of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who died suddenly two weeks ago and who, according to him, had given up sleep to work on behalf of America’s two great allies: Ukraine and Israel. For the new British Prime Minister Burnham, Zelensky is his first international guest, demonstrating that the defence of Kyiv is a strategic priority for the United Kingdom, regardless of whether the government is on the right or the left. 

Burnham wants to change the policy of the last forty years; he makes a populist announcement every day and appears in TikTok videos in which he reveals his passions for music, food and fashion, but he opts for clear continuity when it comes to defending Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Zelensky is due in Washington today; he will be meeting Trump and, naturally, there is a degree of anxiety, as we have already seen in the past that things can go very wrong. But over the last two months – the turning point perhaps being the G7 summit in France in early June – the US’s attitude towards Ukraine has changed for the better. Admittedly, it wasn’t difficult to climb out of the depths of mistrust and contempt of last year, but there is now a different attitude on Trump’s part towards Zelensky. The Ukrainian president has changed the way he wages war and also the way he conducts diplomacy, achieving success on the ground against the Russians – who, despite Vladimir Putin’s denial, are by no means having an easy time of it – and becoming an almost indispensable ally not only for the Americans and Europeans, but also for the Gulf states, which are under attack from Iranian drones that the Ukrainians have learnt to counter effectively and cost-efficiently. Since the start of June, there has been a renewed American rapprochement with Ukraine; partly because Trump is fascinated by winners – and today Zelensky is winning more than Putin – and partly because the war in the Middle East has distracted those most hostile to Ukraine, such as Vice-President J. D. Vance, leaving the most cooperative figures in operational terms, foremost among them CIA Director John Ratcliffe; or perhaps because even an influencer as critical of Ukraine as Laura Loomer is beginning to campaign, amongst her two million ‘MAGA’-aligned followers, in favour of Kyiv, signalling a slight shift in the pro-Russian convictions of the Trumpian world. Then there is the US President’s promise to grant Ukraine licences to produce the indispensable Patriot systems; there is the proposal to speed up Patriot production; there are investments by Ukrainians and Europeans in the production of the so-called ‘European Patriot’; and there are rumours of a possible joint request from Kyiv and Washington to Putin for a ceasefire along the current front line: one can never jump to conclusions when it comes to Trump, the most mercurial US president in history, but the prospects for the meeting with Zelensky are not as bleak as they have often been in the past.

Another factor is that American attention is largely focused on the Middle East. For months, Zelensky has been emphasising – backed by intelligence reports – the support Russia is providing to Iran to strike American or American ally targets in the Gulf. CIA intelligence also confirms this support, and the fact that on Saturday the Ukrainians struck an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea carrying Russian equipment has been interpreted by some experts as a demonstration by Zelensky to bring to his meeting with Trump. Some are alarmed that the two conflicts are merging, but according to Kyiv, they always have been, because Russian-Iranian collaboration is evident both in Ukraine and in the Gulf. The Trump administration has always sought to ignore or downplay this axis, but its effects are increasingly visible, and perhaps the fact that Lindsey Graham’s funeral is taking place alongside the meeting with Zelensky helps to bring things full circle. Graham, unlike Trump and his envoys, had visited Kyiv on numerous occasions – he had only just returned from the Ukrainian capital when he suffered the heart attack that killed him – and had always worked behind the scenes to convince the US president that action must be taken against the anti-American (and anti-Ukrainian and anti-Israeli) axis centred on the link between Moscow and Tehran. The Wall Street Journal was able to view the raw footage of a documentary in production about Graham (currently titled “Lindsey’s Game”): the director is Alex Holder, who had been following Graham since 2023. Most recently, Holder had noticed the senator looked very tired and kept asking him about his health. Graham confided that he was working tirelessly for peace in Ukraine and in defence of Israel, and that he often felt alone in this struggle. In the weeks leading up to his heart attack, he had said: ‘I am tired and exhausted, but I cannot die just yet.’