(Bloomberg) -- US President Joe Biden is not expected to announce a change in policy toward Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles inside of Russia when he meets with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the White House said.
“I wouldn’t be looking for an announcement today about our long-range strike capabilities inside Russia,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Friday. “There’s no change to our policy with respect to that.”
A discussion of whether to let Ukraine conduct long-range strikes in Russia with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles guided by US navigational data was expected to be a key focus of Friday’s talks between the two allies at the White House. Biden has so far resisted such a move out of concern it could escalate the war.
But a recent assessment that Iran sent ballistic missiles to Russia to aid its attacks on Ukraine has increased pressure on the US and UK to open up additional capabilities to Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy this week blasted allies for being too slow in delivering needed military aid to the war-torn country.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned bluntly on Thursday that green-lighting long-range strikes would mean Ukraine’s US and NATO allies “are at war with Russia.” Moscow on Friday also expelled six British diplomats it accused of espionage, charges the UK rejected as baseless.
The expulsions came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Kyiv for talks with Zelenskiy.
Russia began a counteroffensive in the Kursk region this week, seeking to push back Ukrainian forces from its territory. Zelenskiy said that Russia has deployed 40,000 Russian troops to Kursk including from the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, with plans to boost that force to as many as 70,000. The claims couldn’t be independently verified.
Zelenskiy said that Russia’s attempts to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region has seen no significant progress and that Ukraine’s offensive in the area has helped slow down Russian operations in the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions.
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