UKRAINIAN-BRITISH RELATIONS AFTER BREXIT: BILATERAL COOPERATION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article examines the development of relations between Ukraine and the United Kingdom after the latter's withdrawal from the European Union. Expert assessments of the consequences of Brexit on Ukrainian-British relations, as well as the analysis of joint documents signed between Ukraine and the United Kingdom in the post-Brexit period, are taken into account. It turns out that, despite the decision to leave the integration association and its influence on political processes within the European community (loss of contributions to the common budget, lack of state representatives in key European institutions, strengthening of Eurosceptic tendencies in the rest of the EU member states), the United Kingdom remained an important international partner of Ukraine in bilateral relations and did not change its favorable attitude to Ukraine's European integration, guided primarily by foreign policy and security interests, but has lost access within the EU to levers of influence on positive decisions regarding Ukraine in this direction. The strategic level of partnership is laid down in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement of 2020, and later strengthened – already during the hot phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war – by additions to this agreement in terms of trade liberalization with Ukraine, as well as by the later agreement on security cooperation in 2024, which became the first such precedent in a number of bilateral security agreements between Ukraine and other partner countries. Since 2022, the United Kingdom has been actively providing the armed support necessary to repel the Russian invaders, which consists in the transfer of various types of weapons and the training of the Ukrainian military. In the end, the Ukrainian issue became a point of contact in European-British relations, guided by the common interest of protecting the region from escalation by Russia and preventing it from undermining the fundamental principles of the international order.