Prime Minister’s Ukraine reception remarks: 24 February 2025
Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke at a 10 Downing Street reception marking three years since Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It’s a privilege to welcome you all here to Downing Street this afternoon.
This, of course, is not only my office and the centre of our government but it is also my home. So it is appropriate that I throw open the doors to my home to you and make you feel welcome in this building, which is where you should be.
And particularly fitting that you are here in my home today as we recognise people who have been welcomed into homes across the country, and I know there are many of you here.
I’ve just had the privilege and the opportunity to talk with a number of you who have been here some for some little time now and often with children. There are people here who have come, people here who have opened their doors and there are many others across the country.
We are really proud of the people who have opened their doors, opened their hearts as well – because it’s not just a shelter, it’s opening hearts and making you feel welcome particularly in this time of conflict and uncertainty.
And I said to the people I was talking to just now, I would love to be able to get you all together here again on a future occasion that isn’t an anniversary of an awful conflict because that is, of course, what it is today.
Because in the face of that conflict, I do think the bond between our two countries has got stronger and stronger. I think it was a good strong bond anyway, but it has got much stronger and that’s happened across the kitchen tables up and down the nation, as well as the meeting tables.
And of course, I have had the privilege of meeting President Zelenskyy very many times now, on a number of occasions in different places, including here in Downing Street and, of course, in Kyiv.
I’ve actually been to Kyiv four times. I went twice before the conflict, because before I was a politician, I was the chief prosecutor and we were working with criminal justice colleagues in Kyiv. And so I have seen Kyiv in peace – a brilliant, fantastic city – and I’ve seen it twice, once as leader of the opposition and just a few weeks ago as Prime Minister, in this terrible conflict.
When I was there just a few weeks ago, I was able to express our solidarity and support, and I was struck again by the resilience and strength of the Ukrainians, because that sense of civic duty, going and doing everyday work, and treating it as work for the nation was very, very strong.
When I was there four weeks ago, I went to the burns unit at one of the hospitals and saw for myself some of those who have been on the frontline who were being treated in hospital with terrible burns from blasts, really life-changing injuries, and civilians as well who had been caught up in blasts.
In one sense, it’s obvious when you’re in conflict you are going to see things like that but when you’re there and you see it right there, the human impact is huge.
Because this isn’t just about discussions of defence and security in Europe, although it is that, it isn’t just about sovereignty and it is that, it is about the impact on human beings.
When I was there I met children in a school in Kyiv, they were primary-school age so they were 8, 9, 10-years-old, living under the threat of bombardment all of the time. It’s what they are growing up with and I met some of them who had already lost their parents on the frontline at that tender age. That is really humbling, it really brought home to me the human impact of all of this.
Politics is about the decisions you make but it is also about who you have in your mind’s eye when you make your decisions. And I think it is very important that we have you in our mind’s eye.
When I was there with President Zelenskyy just a few weeks ago, we then went to have our discussion as two leaders and at that point a drone – a Russian drone – was up in the sky and had to be shot down right above the presidential palace, which for me was just a real reminder of what it is like to live in Kyiv and to have that threat every day now with the drones going up. It brought home to me the uncertainty and the fear – not just obviously for yourselves and the people living in the conflict, but all of their loved ones, and your family and extended family, and friends, and communities who are there and must be in your mind’s eye all of the time. And for your children and your country in the years to come.
So, amongst my messages here this afternoon is you are not alone.
We stand with you, and we have stood with you throughout this conflict and we will walk with you through this conflict, and we will continue to do so for as long as is necessary.
I am proud that we opened our homes; I’m proud of our NHS workers in the hospital I went to Kyiv, who had gone out there with their skills to try and work with those working in the hospitals; the soldiers that are training Ukrainian troops.
This is incredibly humbling work. I went to see it for myself down in Salisbury. Not only the professionalism of our troops who are doing the training but also the Ukrainian civilians, as they were, who had come to do the training. Through interpreters I talked to a number of them and they had been plumbers, they had been architects, working in local government, and here they were training to go to the frontline. And it was training that would normally take months being truncated into weeks. It was a real sense of what it is like to go through this awful conflict.
Because we know that this fight is about Ukraine – it is about you, your communities – but it is also about us. This is bigger than Ukraine – it is, of course, about Ukrainian sovereignty but it not just Ukrainian sovereignty. It is about our way of life, our freedoms, about security and defence in Europe, and security and defence here in the United Kingdom, and the values that we hold dear.
That’s why last time I was there I signed a 100-year partnership with Ukraine which is to signal the ongoing relationship that we want to build over many, many decades to come.
It’s why we are sending £4.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine this year – that’s more than ever before. And working with our international partners to guarantee the security of Ukraine for generations to come.
Because I strongly believe that whatever happens next, Ukraine must be in the strongest possible position. We must, we must, we must get peace through strength.
The temptation is always there to think that it is job done, or something is about to happen. We have got to make sure that we continue with our full support, whether that is capability, whether that is money, whether that’s training – all the other support that we can put in. And that’s my constant message in the discussions I am having with international leaders
We also need to be really clear as there are lots of discussions at the moment about negotiations: we can’t negotiate about Ukraine without Ukraine – you just can’t – and we must be absolutely clear about this.
After everything you and your people, your country has been through, all the suffering and hardship – this is about the future of Ukraine and Ukraine must be at the table. It’s an absolute pre-condition.
And we must work for a lasting peace. One of my biggest fears is that there is a ceasefire which is a temporary reprieve but simply gives Putin the space to come again and that would be the worst of outcomes.
It must be a lasting peace for you, your children and your children’s children, so that you can live as you should be able to live, in a proud, safe and sovereign Ukraine; able to make sovereign decisions as a country about the alliance that Ukrainians want to make; the partnerships that Ukrainians want to make, and the way of life that Ukrainians want.
So we will not falter in our support.
We will not stop our efforts to end this war.
And we will not rest until the people of Ukraine can live peacefully and safely in their own country.
So thank you for being here; I do hope that I can have the privilege of seeing you here or elsewhere on an occasion where we are not celebrating another anniversary of this conflict but genuinely celebrating freedom and peace for Ukraine and for Europe.
Thank you very much.
Slava Ukraini.