Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin increases nuclear weapon threat as UK expected to sign off missile strikes

Britain will “help keep the lights of Ukraine on in the face of Putin’s aggression”, David Lammy said, as Kyiv marks a “grim milestone” of 1,000 days since Russia’s invasion.

Speaking alongside his Ukrainian counterpart Andrii Sybiha, the foreign secretary condemned Moscow’s recent attack on Ukraine, adding: “It was designed not only to kill Ukrainians, but to take out effectively Ukraine’s power infrastructure and to cause blackouts.”

“Putin wants to plunge Ukraine into darkness. But today, standing here with my friend, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, the UK is showing our support to Ukraine is ironclad.

“We will help keep the lights of Ukraine on in the face of Putin’s aggression, and that matters not just for Ukraine’s security, Britain’s security or indeed Europe’s security.”

Vladimir Putin has maintained a cold silence over Washington allowing Ukraine to strike with Russia with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs.

However, early signals from the Kremlin warned that Mr Biden is adding “fuel to the fire” of the war and would escalate international tensions even higher.

Mr Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

“This is a signal the Biden administration is sending to North Korea and Russia, indicating that the decision to involve North Korean units has crossed a red line,” according to Glib Voloskyi, an analyst at the CBA Initiatives Center, a Kyiv-based think tank.

Six people were killed, including a child, in Russia’s drone attack on Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, regional officials said this morning.

At least 12 people were injured in the drone attack on a residential dormitory in the small town of Hlukhiv, the military administration of the Sumy region, which borders Russia, said on the Telegram channel.

David Lammy said “one president at a time” when asked how concerned he was about the implications of Donald Trump’s presidency for the war in Ukraine.

Speaking to press after a meeting of the UN security council, the foreign secretary said: “I’ve studied in this country, I’ve worked in this country, and I know that there’s a simple rule: one president at a time.

“We’re dealing with President Biden and we are committed to putting Ukraine in the strongest possible position.”

The clock on her wall stopped almost as soon as the day began, its hands frozen by the Russian bomb that hit the dormitory serving as home for Ukrainians displaced by war.

It was 1.45am in an upstairs room in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Panasenko’s home for just shy of a year after the town she thinks of as her real home came under Russian occupation. The explosion blasted a door on top of her, smashed her refrigerator and television and shredded the flowers she’d just received for her 63rd birthday.

“The house was full of people and flowers. People were congratulating me ... and then there was nothing. Everything was mixed in the rubble,” she said. “I come from a place where the war is going on every day. We only just left there, and it seemed to be quieter here. And the war caught up with us again.”

What took you so long, Joe?” President Biden’s belated decision to allow Ukrainian armed forces to deploy a key US-supplied missile system deeper into Russian territory will be a welcome boost to morale in Kyiv, as well as being of some material help.

It should also prompt the British and French to follow suit and to generally encourage other allies to boost their support for Ukraine.

However, it is painful to reflect on how much more effective this change in tactics would have been had the move been made, say, a year or two ago. In hindsight, President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats about escalation proved to be empty – and now no one thinks he’s about to bomb New York, Paris or London in revenge for the West giving the Ukrainians more firepower.

As it is, in the dying days of the Biden administration, it seems unlikely to be the kind of “game changer” that President Zelensky and his long-suffering people have been virtually begging from the West since the earliest days of this conflict.

Ukraine’s Nato allies have welcomed the green lighting move by Joe Biden to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles.

President Andrzej Duda of Poland, which borders Ukraine, praised the decision as a “very important, maybe even a breakthrough moment” in the war.

“In the recent days, we have seen the decisive intensification of Russian attacks on Ukraine, above all, those missile attacks where civilian objects are attacked, where people are killed, ordinary Ukrainians,” Mr Duda said.

Easing restrictions on Ukraine was “a good thing,” said foreign minister Margus Tsahkna of Russian neighbor Estonia.

“We have been saying that from the beginning — that no restrictions must be put on the military support,” he told senior European Union diplomats in Brussels. “And we need to understand that situation is more serious (than) it was even maybe like a couple of months ago.”

But Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico, known for his pro-Russian views, described Biden’s decision as “an unprecedented escalation” that would prolong the war.

Joe Biden has sensationally granted Kyiv permission to use “long-range “ missiles to strike targets deep within Russia, despite Vladimir Putin describing such a move as an act of war.

The weapons are likely to be used in response to North Korea’s decision to send thousands of troops to Russia in support of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and comes after months of pressure from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

He argued the US ban had made it impossible for Ukraine to try to stop Russian attacks on its cities and electrical grids.

We look closer at the weapons that could mark a turning point in the war.