The UK will not approve the use of the weapons against targets in Russia without the agreement of the United States, as Zelensky pleads for ‘decisiveness’
Britain will not allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets in Russia without the agreement of the United States.
President Zelensky pleaded for the UK and US to overcome their “fear” and show “decisiveness” over the issue.
Five former defence secretaries and an ex-prime minister have urged Sir Keir Starmer to go ahead unilaterally. They have warned that delays will only serve to embolden President Putin.
However, The Times has been told that the UK will not “go it alone” because US guidance systems were seen as crucial to ensuring the missiles hit their targets.
The government believes the US is still likely to give the green light at the UN general assembly in New York, although there are splits within President Biden’s administration.
David Lammy, the foreign secretary, told Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1 that there needed to be a “shared strategy” among western allies.
He said: “It’s important that as allies supporting Ukraine, we have a shared strategy to win going forward. Now we’ve been discussing this with the United States and with other key allies, but of course, we head to the UN general assembly, where we will all meet with Zelensky in just under 12 days’ time.”
He said that “no war is won with any one weapon”, but added: “It’s important that we support the Ukrainians to continue to repel Russia in the Black Sea, it’s important that they can deal with the huge challenges in the air that are being mounted by Russia and of course that we support them — and we have — with training of their own men and women on the front line. We want to put Ukraine in the strongest position going forward.”
Zelensky said on Sunday: “The world must help us defend ourselves against Russian military aircraft and the dozens of guided aerial bombs that claim Ukrainian lives every day.
“This terror can be stopped. But to stop it, the fear of making strong, objectively necessary decisions must be overcome. Only decisiveness can bring a just end to this war. It is decisiveness that most effectively protects against terror.”
He said that last week the Russians launched about 30 missiles, more than 800 guided aerial bombs and nearly 300 strike drones against his country. “Ukraine needs strong support from our partners to defend lives against Russian terror-air defence, long-range capabilities, support for our warriors. Everything that will help force Russia to end this war.”
Satellite images suggest Russia has been moving its warships and warplanes further away from the Ukrainian border.
An image from Saturday showed the marina of Russia’s Black Sea naval base of Novorossiysk, about 100km east of the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula, without a single vessel docked.
HI Sutton, the author of several books on submarines who published the photos on X, said there was a similar drill in the bay of Novorossiysk on Wednesday.
The movements came amid Kyiv’s anticipation of an imminent decision by the US and Britain to let it use western-supplied long-range missiles to strike targets in Russia such as airfields and oil depots.
Other open-source researchers including Frontelligence Insight reported similar activity involving Russian warplanes as far back as in July where they tracked bomber jets and helicopters moving further away from Russian bases close to the Ukrainian border.
Russia had to abandon its key naval base in occupied Crimea last summer after several embarrassing attacks, sending most of its warships to Novorossiysk.
It was not immediately clear where Russia would be relocating the ships now but Moscow appears to have sped up the construction of a new Black Sea base, further east, in Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia.
