Ukraine can’t wait for a decision on long-range missiles for ever

Last week was electric with anticipation. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, visited London for a UK-US ‘strategic dialogue’, then he and Foreign Secretary David Lammy both travelled to Ukraine to meet with political and military leaders and discuss the ongoing conflict. Heading in the other direction was the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who made for Washington DC with his outgoing national security adviser, Sir Tim Barrow, to meet President Joe Biden and hold talks on the global situation.

By accident or design, the government allowed speculation to grow that the United Kingdom and the United States were close to an announcement that they were lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied munitions like the Anglo-French Storm Shadow cruise missile. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging his allies and donors for some time to take this step (and continues to bang the drum for it), arguing that it would allow his armed forces to strike vital Russian launch sites, airfields and command and control centres.

This would disrupt Moscow’s war effort and force Vladimir Putin to pull some of his military back from the border with Ukraine, out of missile range, thereby compromising their operational effectiveness.