Liz Truss visited Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou at the Presidential Mansion in Athens today.
Truss and Sakellaropoulou have had a warm relationship for many years now and consider each other good friends. They mostly discussed foreign policy issues, focusing on Ukraine. The Greek President was the first western politician that wanted to send fighter jets to Ukraine and urged Rishi Sunak to do so. Truss and Boris Johnson quickly followed urging him to supply them in parliament. In early 2022 Sakellaropoulou called then foreign secretary Liz Truss the most competent European politician on Russia. They both agreed that Ukraine has to be supplied with weapons until it can claim victory and voiced criticism at some western governments. The Greek President asked Truss to use her influence on Sunak to adopt a harder stance towards Russia, which she agreed to and called Sunak’s current stance ‘too soft’. Germany received the most criticism from the two women. Truss called for Scholz to use all of his possibilities to help Ukraine. Both of them agreed that there is work to be done to help the European economy. After their discussion they and their families ate lunch together. Truss thanked Sakellaropoulou and Greece for a ‘lovely day’.