Any sign of fatigue or wavering in Western support for Ukraine will play directly into President Putin’s hands, the Prime Minister will tell world leaders this week at the first in-person gathering of G7 leaders since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The first few weeks and months of the Ukrainian resistance have been characterised by overwhelming global unity and a huge surge of support for the Ukrainian people. It is essential that this is sustained for the long term. Russia’s behaviour and the atrocities Putin is committing must not become normalised in the eyes of the world.

During his second visit to Kyiv since the outbreak of war last week, the Prime Minister spoke to President Zelenskyy about the urgent needs of the Ukrainian Government. This includes military support, opening up the routes out of the country blockaded by the Russian military and urgent financial support to allow the Ukrainian state to function.

The Ukrainian Government fears it could run out of funding by the autumn unless it is given urgent financial help. To help with this pressing need the UK stands ready to provide another $525 million (or £429 million) in guarantees for World Bank lending later this year.

The new support announced today brings the total amount of fiscal support including UK loan guarantees to £1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) and the combined UK economic and humanitarian support to Ukraine to £1.5 billion ($1.8 billion) this year.

President Zelenskyy will virtually address the G7 Summit today. Following his address, the Prime Minister will use an intervention at the Summit to rally support for Ukraine. He will encourage all G7 countries to back Ukraine in the long-term, building on the significant pledges already made since February.

The Prime Minister said:

Future generations will be awed and inspired by the truly heroic Ukrainian resistance in the face of Putin’s barbarism.

Ukraine can win and it will win. But they need our backing to do so. Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine.

The UK will continue to back Ukraine every step of the way, because we know that their security is our security, and their freedom is our freedom.

UK loan guarantees are playing an important role in closing Ukraine’s financing gap, enabling Multilateral Development Banks like the World Bank to lend far more than they otherwise could to the Ukrainian Government. This lending is covering costs like Ukrainian public sector wages, and the running of schools and hospitals.

These investments will help preserve the Ukrainian state. The UK only covers the cost of the loan if the Ukrainian Government is unable to pay. They are therefore both an investment in Ukraine’s strategic resilience and an expression of confidence in the country’s future.

Without international support, the Ukrainian Government would be forced to pursue paths which compromise their macro-economic stability and long-term economic security, including running down reserves and printing money.  Policies like these would directly lead to mass inflation and humanitarian catastrophe in the country.

A new initiative for more effective and efficient cooperation in support of Pacific Island priorities

The Pacific Islands region is home to nearly a fifth of the Earth’s surface and many of its most urgent challenges, from the climate crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic to growing pressure on the rules-based free and open international order. It was in this context that the Pacific Islands Forum, the premier driver of regional action, committed to organize its members “as one collective if we are to address our increasingly common challenges.”

As our countries—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States—continue to support prosperity, resilience, and security in the Pacific, we too must harness our collective strength through closer cooperation. To that end, our governments dispatched high-level officials to Washington, D.C. on June 23 and 24 for consultations with Pacific Heads of Mission and other partners, including France, as well as the European Union in its observing capacity. These meetings followed discussions with Pacific partners, including with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat; they remain ongoing, including with other partners engaged in the region. Today, our five countries launched an inclusive, informal mechanism to support Pacific priorities more effectively and efficiently: the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP).

This new initiative builds on our longstanding commitment to the region. Australia and New Zealand are of the region and members of the Pacific Islands Forum; Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States are founding Dialogue Partners. Our countries maintain close people-to-people ties to and are longstanding development partners with the Pacific Islands, reflected in our combined $2.1 billion in development assistance for the region. We are united in our shared determination to support a region that benefits the peoples of the Pacific. We are also united in how we realize this vision—according to principles of Pacific regionalism, sovereignty, transparency, accountability, and most of all, led and guided by the Pacific Islands.

With these principles at its core, the Partners in the Blue Pacific aims to:

1. Deliver results for the Pacific more effectively and efficiently.

Together and individually, our five countries will enhance our existing efforts to support Pacific priorities, in line with the Pacific Islands Forum’s upcoming 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. To do so, we will work with Pacific partners. We will map existing projects and plan future ones, seeking to drive resources, remove duplication, and close gaps, which will avoid greater burdens and lost opportunities for Pacific governments and Pacific people. In parallel, each of our governments will continue to increase the ambition of our individual efforts in the region.

2. Bolster Pacific regionalism.

The PBP will forge closer connections with Pacific governments and with the Pacific Islands Forum, by facilitating stronger and more regular engagement with our governments. We will further elevate Pacific regionalism, with a strong and united Pacific Islands Forum at its center, as a vital pillar of the regional architecture and of our respective approaches in the region.

3. Expand opportunities for cooperation between the Pacific and the world.

The PBP will encourage and facilitate greater engagement with the Pacific by any other partner that shares the Pacific’s values and aims to work constructively and transparently to benefit the people of the region. As it develops, the PBP will remain inclusive, informal, and open to cooperating with additional partners similarly invested in and committed to partnership with the Pacific Islands. Globally, the PBP will identify opportunities to expand Pacific participation in international fora.

At every stage, we will be led and guided by the Pacific Islands. We will seek Pacific guidance on the PBP’s selection of its lines of effort and its flagship projects. In meetings in Washington, including at Blair House, our governments and Pacific Heads of Mission discussed diverse areas in which to deepen cooperation, including the climate crisis, connectivity and transportation, maritime security and protection, health, prosperity, and education. We commit to continuing to engage with Pacific governments as well as with Pacific-led regional institutions, particularly the Pacific Islands Forum; we will align our work with outcomes from the upcoming Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Suva, Fiji. Later this year the United States intends to invite Partner countries’ foreign ministers to convene and review our progress.

The UK Government has today (Saturday 25 June) announced a new £27m partnership with the UK’s leading overseas volunteering charity, VSO, to empower people living in low-income countries across the Commonwealth and other countries to take control of their futures.

The Active Citizenship Through Inclusive Volunteering & Empowerment (ACTIVE) programme aims to reach 2.5 million people across 18 countries by mobilising marginalised groups – including women, young people and those with disabilities – to act on the issues that are most important to them and their local communities.

This funding will build on the volunteering for development model to help strengthen locally led organisations and create a culture of volunteerism, whilst building the capacity of the UK’s partner countries, including Rwanda, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Eswatini, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Bangladesh to respond to the demands of their citizens.

It will include twinning partnerships between hospitals in the UK and those in our partner countries to exchange skills and learning, including on areas like childhood cancer and family planning. Lewisham and Greenwich NHS trust and Rwanda’s Nyagatare District Hospital are already working together, and further partnerships are planned with hospitals across the UK.

Education partnerships will also be a cornerstone of the ACTIVE programme, including the Numeracy for All project, which will support teachers to make and use low – and no-cost – teaching aids that encourage active and playful maths learning.

Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon, Minister of State for South and Central Asia, North Africa, UN and the Commonwealth, said:

The new ACTIVE programme will be a unique opportunity to use British expertise through volunteering to support our partner countries to take the lead in their own development.

By unleashing the potential of individuals and communities through voluntary work, while supporting the best locally led organisations to meet the priorities of the people and communities they benefit, we can bring about lasting, inclusive change.

I am delighted that the UK Government can take their partnership with VSO to the next level through this exciting new programme.

The FCDO Minister for the Commonwealth announced the Partnership for Change at a roundtable with Rwandan civil society whilst at CHOGM in Kigali.

ACTIVE will build on the success of VSO’s FCDO funded (£70.5m) Volunteering for Development programme, which ended in March 2022. Over the course of the five-year programme FCDO supported over 350 local partner organisations and more than 6,500 volunteers in 24 countries, to improve access to health, education and livelihood services for 5 million people.

Dr Philip Goodwin, CEO of VSO said:

Volunteering for development has helped to make the UK a global leader and authority in quality and inclusive volunteering practices that put volunteers and the most marginalised people at the centre of the influencing change in their own lives

The ACTIVE grant will enable VSO to continue to support national and community-based volunteers to be agents for change.