Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine..reports Asian Lite News
Britain is expected to supply Storm Shadow missiles for use by Ukraine on targets inside Russia, now that the US president, Joe Biden, has agreed to do the same for the similar American long-range Atacms weapon.
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, said at the G20 summit that the UK recognised it needed to “double down” on its support for Ukraine, while diplomatic sources briefed they expected other European countries to follow the US lead.
The prime minister said that, while he was “not going to get into operational details”, he recognised the need to do more to help Ukraine, whose electricity network was seriously damaged by a wave of Russian bombing on Sunday.
“I’ve been really clear for a long time now, we need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war,” the prime minister said.
Russia, however, accused the west of escalation and said that Biden risked adding “fuel to the fire” in Ukraine, and while Donald Trump remained silent on the issue, his son Don Jr accused the military industrial complex of wanting to get “world war three going”.
Storm Shadow missiles have a range of about 250km (155 miles), similar to the US Atacms, and have in the past been given to Kyiv by the UK and France to strike targets inside Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.
But the US retained an effective veto on their use because it supplies a guidance system and repeated lobbying by the UK had failed to shift the US position, which has only begun to soften after the election victory of Donald Trump earlier this month.
Ukraine wants to be able to strike barracks, fuel and logistics hubs, and airbases deeper inside Russia to blunt Moscow’s relentless attacks on their country. Russia, by contrast, is able to strike targets anywhere in Ukraine.
Biden had refused to allow permission for long-range missiles to be used inside Russia for years but finally relented on Sunday, and said that Ukraine could use Atacms missiles to try to halt an expected counter-offensive by an estimated 50,000 Russian and North Korean forces in Kursk.
Ukraine had also become increasingly exasperated with Britain on the issue of long-range missiles, complaining earlier this month that not only had there been no progress on their use inside Russia but that the UK had stopped supplying them at all.
Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, accused the US of escalation. “It is clear that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps to continue to add fuel to the fire and to further inflame tensions around this conflict.” He added: “This decision is reckless, dangerous, aimed at a qualitative change, a qualitative increase in the level of involvement of the United States.”
Peskov said Putin had expressed his position clearly in September when the Russian leader warned that the move to let Kyiv use longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be directly “at war” with Moscow.
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