Yvette Cooper gives powerful message to Zelensky in Kyiv after Putin strikes

Yvette Cooper has paid tribute to brave Ukrainians facing down Russia, telling Volodymyr Zelensky : "You do this for all of us".

The Foreign Secretary shared a warm greeting with the Ukrainian President when they met in Kyiv. "I wanted to thank you [for the visit]," he said as he welcomed her to the grand Office of the President Building. "It is important for us."

She replied: "It is the most important place to be. Your security is our security." Within days of becoming Foreign Secretary, Ms Cooper travelled to Kyiv in a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine as it faces intensified Russian aggression.

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She told the Ukrainian President: "Through your strength and your courage in the face of Russian aggression, we know that you do this for all of us.

"Your security is our security. That is why we were with you from day one and we will be with you all the way through to peace, to victory and also to rebuilding [Ukraine]."

She said she felt personally invested in the conflict after hosting a Ukrainian family since the start of the war. Ms Cooper and her husband Ed Balls took in Yeva Drozhzhyna and her mother Katerina in 2022, at her home in her Castleford constituency, in West Yorkshire.

The US President thanked her for showing hospitality to his people. The Foreign Secretary also visited Ukraine's main Government building, the Council of Ministers, which was hit in a Russian air attack at the weekend.

She joined Ukrainian PM Yulia Svyrydenko, whose offices are two floors below the rooms that were hit, to survey the damage. The remnants of a Russian missile were piled in the corner of the room, which was open to the elements after part of the roof was destroyed.

Earlier the UK slapped new sanctions on Putin's war machine amid spiralling tensions over Russia's violation of Polish air space. Ms Cooper warned the Russian despot that Britain would not stand by as he continued his barbaric invasion.

Russian drones were shot down in the early hours of Wednesday morning after crossing into Polish airspace, an unprecedented incursion into Nato territory.

It came in the wake of Moscow's largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the war began, which included a hit on a key government building in Kyiv for the first time. Britain announced 100 new sanctions to turn the screws on Russia's economy, targeting its military sector and illicit shadow fleet, which bankrolls the Kremlin’s illegal war by exporting Russian oil under the radar to avoid Western bans.

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