Lammy and Blinken arrive in Kyiv ahead of visit to show support for Ukraine
The pair will listen to Kyiv’s calls for permission to use Western long-range weapons to strike Russian territory.
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Your support makes all the difference.Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his US counterpart Antony Blinken have arrived in Kyiv ahead of their joint visit to show support for Ukraine.
The pair took an overnight train from eastern Poland and reached the Ukrainian capital at 11.45am local time.
US Secretary of State Mr Blinken travelled from London, where he accused Iran of providing Russia with Fath-360 short-range ballistic missiles, calling the move a “dramatic escalation” of the war.
On their joint mission they will listen to Kyiv’s calls for permission to use Western long-range weapons to strike Russian territory, with US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer set to discuss the issue in Washington on Friday.
Mr Lammy hailed the Kyiv trip as “the first of its kind in a decade” at a press conference alongside his US counterpart on Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly pushed for permission to use Western missiles to strike at targets within Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
At the joint press conference with Mr Lammy, Mr Blinken said: “One of the purposes of the trip we will be taking together is to hear directly from the Ukrainian leadership including … President Zelensky about exactly how the Ukrainians see their needs in this moment, toward what objectives and what we can do to support those needs.
“All I can tell you is we will be listening intently to our Ukrainian partners, we will both be reporting back to the Prime Minister, to President Biden in the coming days, and I fully anticipate this is something they will take up when they meet on Friday.”
Asked whether Ukraine will be given permission to use UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles in Russia, Mr Lammy said: “It’s hugely important that we’re travelling together to hear from our Ukrainian counterparts and President Zelensky their assessment of the situation on the ground and their needs on the ground.
“It would, however, be quite wrong to comment on the detail of operational issues in a forum such as this, because the only person who could benefit is Putin, and we will do nothing to give him any advantage in his illegal invasion.”
Meanwhile, the UK announced sanctions on 10 ships operating as part of a “shadow fleet” seeking to evade the embargo on Russian oil.
The vessels, described as “high-volume offenders”, will now be barred from entering UK ports and refused access to the UK Ship Register.
Mr Lammy said: “Russia has been forced to spend over 8 billion dollars (£6 billion) amassing this shadow fleet. But with sanctioned tankers loitering and unable to load oil, we are determined to make Putin’s investment an expensive misstep for the Kremlin.”