LONDON, January 25. /TASS/. The UK is unlikely to deploy British troops to Ukraine for combat, UK Foreign Minister Liz Truss said in a speech before parliament on Tuesday.

""It is unlikely that that would be the circumstance," she said when asked by a lawmaker if British troops will be deployed to Ukraine in a combat role, not just for helping to train the Ukrainian forces. This follows earlier statements by UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace and a spokesman for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that there are no plans to send British troops to Ukraine in the event of a purported Russian invasion.

Truss reiterated that the UK helped to train 50,000 Ukrainian soldiers and officers, provided defensive weapons and put strong pressure on allies to provide Ukraine with similar assistance to raise the country’s defense capability.

The UK foreign minister also said she planned to visit Ukraine next week. She also reiterated that a purported Russian invasion of Ukraine would be a strategic mistake that would trigger coordinated Western sanctions and cost dearly to the Russian economy.

Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the UK Foreign Office requested an opportunity for Truss to travel to Moscow and the request was being studied. UK foreign ministers haven’t come to Russia since Johnson, who’s now the prime minister, visited in December 2017.

There has been a flurry of statements in the West and Kiev in recent months that Russia allegedly could invade Ukraine. Moscow said they were unsubstantiated escalation, while the Kremlin didn’t rule out that the purpose of these statements was to justify an attempt to resolve the crisis in southeastern Ukraine by force and warned that these actions by Kiev would have serious consequences.

At the end of December, Russia proposed that it sign legally binding agreements with the US and NATO on mutual security guarantees due to what Moscow said is NATO’s ongoing military utilization of the Ukrainian territory. The sides held several rounds of talks including a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, where the Russian foreign minister reiterated Russia didn’t plan to invade Ukraine.