Sir Keir Starmer has told the Ukrainian president that British missiles can be used for defensive strikes against targets inside Russia.
The announcement came as the new British prime minister met Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Washington DC on Wednesday.
The decision over the Storm Shadow missiles, which has been welcomed by Ukraine, represents a hawkish shift in policy from the stance taken by the former Conservative government.
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In a post on X after the meeting with Sir Keir, President Zelenskyy said: "This morning, I learned about the permission to use Storm Shadow missiles against military targets in Russian territory.
“Today we had the opportunity to discuss the practical implementation of this decision. I’m grateful to the UK for its unwavering support for Ukraine and our people.”
However, reacting to the news, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said: “If this is so then, of course, this is another absolutely irresponsible step towards escalating tensions and seriously escalating the situation.”
Dimitry Peskov told Reuters: “We will be watching this very thoroughly and respond accordingly.”
Regardless of how much or how little support one wants to give Ukraine (Slava Ukraini!) it always struck me as bizarre that people thought it reasonable to give them missiles and then expect them not to use those missiles against the country they’re at war with.
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The USA gave the Afghan mujahideen stinger missiles expecting them to only be used against Russia, people have short memories.
The situation is a bit different though. Ukraine wants to maintain good relations with the West. In Afghanistan they didn’t care.
A lot of the European countries are just very cautious about starting another war. Partly because of the obvious implications of that but also partly because they were never utterly convinced that their populations would be behind it.
As it has turned out mostly there is broad support for escalating the conflict as people are appalled by what Russia is doing. So governments are increasingly willing to allow the use of weapons. It also helps that Russia has demonstrated themselves to be completely useless. Rather ensuring that they won’t actually be any escalations because Russia wouldn’t be able to actually make good on their threats.