Ukraine-Russia war latest: Lammy says West ‘won’t be bullied by Putin’ as fears grow over Iran nuclear deal
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian will met Vladimir Putin in Russia amid tensions with west
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The West will not be bullied by Vladimir Putin’s threat of war with Nato if Ukraine is given permission to use Western weapons to strike inside Russia, the UK foreign secretary has said.
David Lammy said talks were continuing with the US and allies about giving Kyiv permission to use UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles to hit Russian airbases and military sites.
Russian president Mr Putin has warned that allowing long-range strikes “would mean that Nato countries, the United States, and European countries are at war with Russia”.
Mr Lammy said there was “a lot of bluster” from Mr Putin but “we cannot be blown off course by an imperialist fascist” who “wants to move into countries willy-nilly”.
It comes as tensions have grown between Iran and the West over military cooperation between Russia and Tehran.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken previously said that Russia had received ballistic missiles from Iran and was likely to use them in Ukraine within weeks. The US and UK have since imposed sanctions on Iran.
Tehran deny these claims and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said sanctions against the country are not the solution.
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Breaking: Russia and Ukraine swap 103 POWs each, reports
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war, with each side releasing 103 people, the Interfax news agency said citing Russia’s defence ministry.
The ministry said the Russian soldiers exchanged on Saturday had been taken prisoner in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian forces captured territory there last month in their first major incursion into Russia.
Russia's Medvedev threatens to turn Kyiv into 'giant melted spot'
Senior Russian security official and former president Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia could destroy Ukraine‘s capital Kyiv with non-nuclear weapons in response to the use of Western long-range missiles by Ukraine.
Medvedev said Moscow already had formal grounds to use nuclear weapons since Ukraine‘s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but could instead use some of its new weapon technologies to reduce Kyiv to “a giant melted spot” when its patience runs out.
“Russia is showing patience. After all, it is obvious that a nuclear response is an extremely difficult decision with irreversible consequences,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He added: “any patience comes to an end.”
“And then that’s it. A giant gray melted spot on the site of the mother city of Russia [Kyiv]. Holy s**t! It’s impossible, but it happened.”
Kyiv is sometimes referred to as the “mother city of Russia” because of its importance to Orthodox Christians in the region.
Stoltenberg says NATO could have done more to prevent Ukraine war
NATO could have done more to arm Ukraine to try to prevent Russia’s invasion in 2022, the outgoing head of the Western military alliance has said.
“Now we provide military stuff to a war - then we could have provided military stuff to prevent the war,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told German weekly newspaper FAS.
Stoltenberg pointed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s reluctance to provide weapons that Kyiv had asked for before Russia’s full-scale invasion because of fears that tensions with Russia would escalate.
“To end this war there will have to be again dialogue with Russia at a certain stage. But it has to be based on Ukrainian strength,” he added.
Watch: Biden says ‘I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin’ as Starmer arrives for talks
Russia has lost 632,630 troops since the beginning of its war in Ukraine, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
This number includes 1,210 Russian force casualties over the past day.
Former defence secretary says he is ‘disappointed’ with talks between Biden and Starmer
Former British defence secretary Ben Wallace has said he is “dissapointed” by the “tug of war” discussions between Joe Biden and Keir Starmer about Ukraine.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, he said: “I’m just disappointed that it’s yet again another tug of war around another capability. It goes on and on. It started with anti-tank missiles and anti-air missiles, then tanks.”
“All of that tug of war favours Russia,” he added.
“Ultimately, the people who are suffering are those Ukrainians, of all ages, fighting for their freedom, and in fact, Europe’s freedom.”
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