Dame Priti Patel has rejected US President Donald Trump's accusation that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a "dictator". The shadow foreign secretary adds the Ukrainian president "is fighting heroically for the sovereignty, freedom and independence of his country". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00Well, we stand by Ukraine and President Zelensky, as Britain has, we've led the way on this
00:06dreadful war in Ukraine, which has been the result of Russia, Putin's illegal invasion
00:11of Ukraine. President Zelensky is not a dictator, that is absolutely crystal clear. It is Putin's
00:18brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine that started and commenced this war. And of course,
00:23we saw this back in 2014 through what happened in Crimea to 2022. And this is the most brutal
00:30conflict on our continent since the Second World War. And that's why Britain is proud
00:35to be alongside Ukraine and why we're proud of the work that we have done and successive
00:41conservative governments have given in terms of their strong and unyielding support for
00:46Ukraine. Well, President Trump actually has been consistent in the sense that he has always
00:50said, and he said this before his big, his very big election victory, that he wanted
00:55the war in Ukraine to end. I think what we're now seeing is, which is something that is
00:59not surprising, the type of language that he is using is consistent in the sense that
01:04it's a language he's used to effectively tell Europe to get your act together, you know,
01:09to step up when it comes to defence, security, military capability and spending. My party
01:15fundamentally had a plan for increasing our defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. And we've
01:21said that we would work with the government to deliver that. It was a costed plan. I think
01:25that is a very strong way in which we can demonstrate to the President of the United
01:29States that we're very serious about making sure that we are contributing in the right
01:34way on the national security, not just of our country, but leading other European allies
01:39and NATO allies on this front in particular. But just one other thing to say here is that
01:45American security is on the line in the same way in which European security is on the line
01:49through this conflict. And that's why we've all stood up to make sure that we support
01:54Ukraine and we help Ukraine to fight for its sovereignty and for the freedoms that the
02:00Ukrainians are fighting for, because they're the same values and freedoms that we all hold
02:04very dear here. President Zelensky is not a dictator. I'll be very categorically crystal
02:09clear about that. He is not a dictator. He's fighting heroically for the sovereignty,
02:15the freedom and the independence of his country, which, by the way, Britain did in the Second
02:21World War, and that equally applied to us at the time of that shameful conflict. And
02:26of course, Putin is the one that has brutalised hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. He's
02:31kidnapped Ukrainian children. He's done the most appalling, appalling things, which is
02:35why I come back to our position. We stand with the people of Ukraine and why Britain
02:40has been so supportive. And by the way, the British people have been so generous towards
02:44the people of Ukraine that have come to our country.