Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with King Charles III at Windsor Castle, June 23 as part of his state visit to the United Kingdom. Windsor Castle is a 484,000-square-foot building of 1,000 rooms. After taking of pictures as Zelenskyy entered the castle, Zelenskyy and Charles held a private meeting.
This is the third time this year that Zelenskyy has met with Charles, having met at Charles’s Sandringham House palace in March, and at the beginning of the year. The two also met in Oxfordshire in July 2024 on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit, and at Buckingham Palace in February 2023. Charles is an anti-Russia zealot. On May 21, 2014, while on a tour of Canada, Charles compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, reported the Daily Telegraph. While speaking to a Polish woman in the crowd, with respect to operations in Crimea, Charles said, “And now Putin is doing just the same as Hitler.” He said this only three months after the Anglo-American Maidan coup in February 2014 had installed a pro-Nazi regime in Kiev.
Following the Windsor meeting with Charles, Zelenskyy went to Chatham House, the Royal household’s senior policy-formulating think tank, for a discussion billed as being on “defense and reconstruction.” Top Chatham House people and the media met with Zelenskyy behind closed doors, as its rule is that nothing is to be reported outside Chatham House walls.
Then, the would-be leader of Ukraine met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street. After greeting each other with a bear hug, they got down to the business of financing and providing arms packages to Ukraine. After meeting with Starmer, Zelenskyy posted to his X account: “Today, I had a substantive meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer…. We discussed the development of defense cooperation. Collaboration in this area will allow Ukraine to receive stable funding for important projects, particularly the production of interceptor drones and long-range drones….” As director of the Drone Coalition, with 18 member states, Britain plans to oversee millions of drones produced for Ukraine.
Britain has now removed any pretense of action at a distance, and is publicly steering Ukraine, as it did “privately” in the past.
Zelenskyy may have more of a background role at the June 24 NATO summit, due to the presence of President Donald Trump, who has restrained U.S. support for Ukraine. Ukraine’s war with Russia is not going well. But the British see Ukraine and Zelenskyy not as a nation, with actual needs, but as an element to bring the world to the verge of nuclear confrontation.
