UK’s Burnham plans US trip to lobby Trump on Ukraine Patriot missiles

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he and other European leaders plan to travel to the US next month to lobby President Donald Trump to let Ukraine access some of its Patriot air defence missile stocks ahead of the winter.

“I’m looking forward to going to New York in September,” Burnham said in an interview with Bloomberg in Kyiv on Monday evening, referring to the coming UN General Assembly meeting in New York. It would be his first trip to the US since becoming prime minister.

“I’ve not fully confirmed the details yet but it’s likely I will go, particularly after today’s discussion,” he said. “Leaving today, I’m quite clear what I need to do in the next few weeks.”

Burnham’s comments came on his first international visit since becoming premier, after chairing a meeting of Ukraine’s allies for the first time and holding a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky has made repeated pleas to European nations and the US to help Ukraine obtain Patriot missile interceptors and to replenish its stocks in time for winter, when Russia is expected to ramp up attacks on energy infrastructure again. The interceptors are the most potent weapons to shoot down Russian cruise and ballistic missiles.

Burnham said he left feeling “really optimistic” that Ukraine’s current struggles defending against Russian ballistic missile strikes due to its low stockpile of interceptors are “fixable”.