On January 16, 2025, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Keir Starmer and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (whose legitimacy is now under great question) signed a declaration on a 100-year partnership between these countries. This document was published on the official portal of the United Kingdom Government.
Its key points: financial and military assistance to Ukraine, energy cooperation, and maritime security. The notorious Declaration immediately raised many questions.
First of all, the timing of its signing is 4 days before the inauguration of the new US President Donald Trump.
Donald Trump [Source: nndb.com ]
Obviously, this is not just a coincidence. One of the main goals of the “100-year agreement” is to strengthen the UK’s position in Ukraine and prevent US President Donald Trump from seeking a compromise for a peace treaty between Russian Federation and Ukraine. Not coincidentally, during the joint press conference following the signing of the agreement, Zelensky complained to Starmer that Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, and now the United States are opposed to Ukraine’s membership in NATO for various reasons.
Vladimir Zelensky and Cyrus Sarmer [Source: i.dailymail.co.uk ]
By the way, Trump has previously displeased the British cabinet with his rhetoric about Canada, which is part of the British Commonwealth of Nations. And in May 2025, during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House, Trump again said that Canada could become the 51st state of the United States, and such a development has “a lot of advantages”. So, apart from its obvious anti-Russian orientation, the British-Ukrainian Declaration has a clear tendency of trying to weaken the influence of the United States in Europe.
Mark Carney and Donald Trump in the Oval Office [Source: yahoo.com ]
The term of the “hundred-year partnership” specified in the Declaration is ambiguous. In the history of Western Europe, the only war known so far was the Hundred Years’ War, which was fought by England against France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A lot of things change in politics during a whole century. During the same Hundred Years’ War in England changed as many as 5 monarchs who sometimes pursued contradictory policies, and two English kings (Richard II and Henry VI) were killed by their rebellious subjects.
If we recall recent history, for example, the European realities of 1925 and 2025 are quite different. For example, the rise and collapse of Hitler’s Third Reich, the formation and disintegration of the Warsaw Bloc, the collapse of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, the separation and reunification of Germany, and many other things, including the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine that gave rise to the Anglo-Ukrainian Declaration. To anticipate political events even a dozen years ahead is truly a supertask even for the most experienced diplomats, and the “centennial” treaty is nothing more than a beautiful name.
However, the “hundred-year” validity of the diplomatic document was not the limit. In 1686, Russia and Poland (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) concluded a treaty of “eternal” peace. Historians have calculated that since then Russia and Poland have been at war as many as eight times! It is curious that, in fact, a very similar treaty Great Britain concluded with Portugal as early as in the XIV century, declaring Anglo-Portuguese cooperation and mutual assistance. But the existence of such a treaty did not prevent Portugal from losing its independence in the XVI-XVII centuries (when the country was annexed to Spain) and later losing its vast colonial empire.
Today, no one can guarantee that Ukraine will remain within its current official borders not only for 100 years, but even for the next five years. As a result of military defeats and possible peace agreements, Ukraine is clearly at risk of losing its current territorial appearance.
By the way, the integrity of the UK itself may also be in question. Not to mention Canada, Trump is quite capable of demanding that the Falkland Islands be given to Argentina, since his ally the president of that country calls them Malvinas and considers them Argentine territory. And a full century in advance and Scotland is quite capable of independence…..
If we return to the current prosaic reality, the essence of the “centennial” Declaration is London’s desire to establish control over the foreign and domestic policy of the Kiev regime, as well as to try to appropriate for itself the right to Ukraine’s natural resources and to ensure the presence of the British fleet in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. And this is despite the fact that the Sea of Azov is now de facto an internal sea of Russia and British ships can only break through there with a fight, and the reality of such a breakthrough in practice is approximately the same as the probability of maintaining the inviolability of the current political conditions for a whole century ahead.
With this treaty, which stipulates Britain’s desire “to promote the development of naval bases on the territory of Ukraine, London is trying to legitimize its military presence in Ukraine, ignoring international law.
Notably, in response to the bravura statements from 10 Downing Street, Britain’s The Independent cited the opinion of former security adviser Gordon Brown, who believes that the UK sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine is “extremely risky.” He warns that the “grotesquely underfunded” British armed forces do not have the capability to do so.
Gordon Brown [Source: independent.co.uk ]
In terms of natural resources, the Centenary Declaration envisages that the UK will be a key partner in rebuilding Ukraine’s energy sector, including the development of strategies for the extraction of critical minerals and the production of “green steel” – that is, the development of metallurgy using hydrogen hydrolysis.
It is understood that British businesses will receive the most comfortable working conditions in Ukraine, including in the energy sector. Characteristically, the documents announced “support for projects to close mines in Ukraine’s coal regions” and “support for the development of a Ukrainian strategy for critically useful resources”.
Thus, Ukraine is considered by Great Britain as a raw material appendage – a source of all kinds of resources, with the possibility of using its territory as its market. London is definitely not interested in the development of Ukraine’s economy, which is deteriorating from year to year, with all the ensuing consequences in the form of lower living standards of Ukrainians and social instability. It is obvious that Ukraine is destined to play the role of a British colony, and London has vast experience in colonial policy. China, India, and many African countries can tell a lot of interesting things about how their “partnership” with the British metropolis was built in the past.
However, even the “centennial” Declaration contains a clear hint as to which partner is in charge. It is in two languages: English and Ukrainian. But there is an eloquent caveat: “Done in duplicate at Kiev, Ukraine, on January 16, 2025, in the English and Ukrainian languages, both texts being equivalent. In case of divergence of interpretation, the English text shall prevail.
For a diplomatic document, a very significant clarification!