UKRAINIAN MP Kira Rudik has praised the UK for playing a leading role in the coalition supporting the country in its struggle to push back Russian forces.

Discussing the visit of president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to the UK today, she told GB News: “We are so grateful to the United Kingdom and your government and people for all the support that we received.

“I think it’s only natural that the president pays his respect and shows the gratitude of the Ukrainian people to the British people, saying thank you for all the support and thank you for helping us push back [Russia] and please stay with us because we are going to win this war.”

Speaking to Tom Harwood live from Kyiv, she added: “I have travelled to 34 countries over the last year since the full scale invasion started. We have been able to gather pretty strong alliances with democratic countries that support us, not because we are Ukraine but because we are a democracy and we stand for the same values.

“We truly support the President’s visit and we do hope that everybody will feel what we feel that through gratefulness for what is happening right now with the democratic alliance and the role that Britain is playing in it, one of the leading roles.

“The fuel that we are running right now is called hope and the fact that our marines and our fighter jet pilots have been trained to be able to push back Russian forces is truly important for Ukrainian people, to know not only that we are receiving the support right now, but that we have to prospect of having well trained forces, have more weapons, more supplies and ability to really go forward.”

Asked if Mr Zelenskyy would be visiting the EU, she said: “It will all depend on the ability to have the proper security in place. We know that this is the crucial point and not only for President Zelenskyy, but for everyone whom he will be meeting with, especially the European Parliament, that was in the plans.

“The prospects for this trip will remain secret until everything is in place and until everybody feels confident that it can all go ahead as planned.”

She said: “A year from the beginning of full scale invasion, we are still in a David versus Goliath situation.

“Russia still has an enormous amount of human force and they’re still producing weapons and they are buying them from Iran.

“So for us, we have to also get as many weapons as possible on our site. We have to be smarter, we have to be more organised. We have to be more modern, and we still have to be motivated because we are fighting for our own country for our own land.

“We do not have any other strategy that is better than that and we would also say that we can only fight this horde back when we are supported by our allies.

“So this is basically what we are doing. We are asking for more weapons. We are mobilising our forces. We are making sure that we stay united and motivated.

“We hope that the international pressure and the sanctions will weaken Russia so they cannot continue spending so much resources on the war.

“However, we know that there are fights still to come and we know that they are very reliant on the date.

“We’re expecting that there will be some offence on the year anniversary of the full scale invasion, so we’re getting ready.

“And this is why it’s so critical to get all the weapons in time to our country and this is what we are pushing for.”