The British government has committed to ensuring Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO membership, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, as reported by the UK’s PA Media news agency.

Starmer made the comments in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of the Ukrainian president’s attendance at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.

“The prime minister began by reiterating the UK’s concrete support for Ukraine, for as long as it’s needed,” a Downing Street spokesperson said in a readout of the call.

“The prime minister reiterated the UK’s commitment to Ukraine being on an irreversible path to NATO as agreed by allies at the Washington Summit last year,” the spokesperson continued.

This comes after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth apparently ruled out Kyiv joining the military alliance on Wednesday, saying that it was unrealistic. Hegseth also said that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, “is an unrealistic objective.”

/CNN