Ukraine fires British Storm Shadow missiles inside Russia for first time – war latest

The US embassy in Kyiv will resume normal operations today after it had shut for the day yesterday due to threat of a significant air attack. A day earlier, the US had given nod to Kyiv to fire US’s ATACMS missiles to strike inside Russia.

Russia had described the strike by US missiles on an ammunition depot in Bryansk as an escalation in the 1,000-day-old war, while Ukraine‘s military spy agency said Russia was trying to sow panic by circulating fake online messages about a looming missile and drone attack.

“@USEmbassyKyiv has resumed services following a temporary shelter-in-place suspension earlier today,” US ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink wrote on X.

“We continue to encourage US citizens to remain vigilant, monitor official Ukrainian sources for updates, and be prepared to shelter in place if an air alert is announced.”

The US State Department had earlier said it expected the Kyiv embassy to resume normal operations today.

The initial State Department statement on the embassy’s website said the embassy would be closed “out of an abundance of caution”. Embassy employees, it said, were being instructed to “shelter in place”.

“The US Embassy recommends US citizens be prepared to immediately shelter in the event an air alert is announced.”

The Kremlin said it had no comment.

A US government source said the embassy closure was “related to ongoing threats of air attacks”. The Italian and Greek embassies said they too had closed their doors. The French embassy remained open but urged its citizens to be cautious.

Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the Crimea peninsula, illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, would have to be restored to Ukrainian sovereignty through diplomacy.

Mr Zelensky, interviewed by Fox News on a train in Ukraine and broadcast yesterday, said his country could not afford to lose the number of lives that would be required to retake Crimea through military means.

He again rejected any notion of ceding any territory already occupied by Moscow’s forces, saying Ukraine “cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian.”

“I was already mentioning that we are ready to bring Crimea back diplomatically,” Mr Zelensky told Fox News through an interpreter.

“We cannot spend dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming backa… and still it’s not a fact that we can bring it back with the arms in our hands. We understand that Crimea can be brought back diplomatically.”

On the sidelines of the G20 summit, Sergei Lavrov said: “If long-range missiles are going to be applied from Ukraine into Russian territory, it will also mean that they are operated by American military experts and we will be taking this as a qualitatively new phase of the Western war against Russia and will react accordingly.”

The UK government’s decision to axe two former Royal Navy flagships, a frigate and 14 Chinook helicopters shows “just how tight resources must be” in the Ministry of Defence, an analyst has said.

Matthew Savill, military sciences director at RUSI, the world’s oldest defence think-tank, said: “These are mostly capabilities that are approaching retirement anyway, have been at low levels of readiness or aren’t worth further refits or investment.

“But the fact that Defence either can’t crew them, or is prepared to cut them to make very modest savings over five years in the current international environment is an indication of just how tight resources must be in the MOD right now.

“In particular, the Defence Review will be under pressure to set out the future role of the Royal Marines; how the Navy will bring into service and sustain more escorts, which are the workhorses of the fleet; and the impact upon helicopter capacity and procurement.”

A survivor of the atomic bomb attack on Japan’s Nagasaki during the Second World War has warned Vladimir Putin that he has no idea of the destruction and pain such weapons cause as he threatens the West with the prospect of nuclear war.

Terumi Tanaka, one of a diminishing number of survivors of the US attacks on Japan in 1945, said the use of nuclear weapons would spell “the end of the human race” and that leaders like Mr Putin “don’t realise the extent of the damage that can be done”.

Mr Tanaka’s warning, made during a sit-down interview with The Independent in campaign group Nihon Hidankyo’s small but bustling Tokyo office, came at a time of escalating nuclear sabre-rattling from the Russian leadership.

Mr Tanaka, 92, said civilisation as we know it faces an “imminent danger” and a nuclear war appears to be “not far away”, adding: “I’m very scared about it.”

The Independent’s Asia editor Adam Withnall has the full exclusive report:

In this opinion piece for Independent Voices, historian and author Mark Almond writes:

The announcement that the US embassy in Kyiv – and some EU embassies – are shutting for fear of Russian airstrikes adds to the mood of growing crisis over Ukraine.

If the Kremlin was to deliberately target foreign embassies in Ukraine, it would be a huge breach in the taboos protecting diplomatic installations even in wartime. Diplomatic immunity is not the only taboo that could fall.

More immediately and widely effective is Washington’s decision to send anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine to slow Russia’s slow but steady advances across the front in eastern Ukraine.

One thing the US has in common with Russia – not to mention China and the world’s “pariah” regimes like Iran, or states without functioning governments like Libya – is its refusal to join the 1997 anti-personnel landmine treaty. The treaty bans their use by most of the world, including the UK and America’s European allies and even Ukraine itself.

Russia, of course, broke the taboo against aggression – in force since Nuremberg in 1945 – by invading Ukraine in the first place. But if Kyiv reneges on its treaty obligation – arguing military necessity – it will be another nail in the coffin of well-meaning attempts to limit the horrors of war.

What is the next shibboleth to fall? How long before WMD become battlefield necessities justified by the actual state of the war on the ground?

The Czech defence ministry has announced plans to buy 14 Leopard 2A4 tanks from Germany in a $167m deal, as the country seeks to modernise its military following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The ministry said it hoped the deal would be signed with Germany’s Rheinmetall Landsysteme GmbH by the end of the year, with the tanks to be delivered by the end of 2026.

Germany has already donated 28 Leopard 2A4 tanks to the Czechs in exchange for the weapons they gave to Ukraine. The Leopards will replace the obsolete Soviet-era T-72 tanks.

Amnesty International has condemned Washington’s decision to supply Ukraine with anti-personnel mines as “reckless” and a “deeply disappointing setback”.

Norway’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, called it “very problematic” because Ukraine is a signatory to an international convention opposing the use of land mines.

However, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin argued that Ukraine already makes its own ant-personnel mines, and that the US has been providing Ukraine with anti-tank mines. He said the new mines the US is giving Kyiv are not persistent, meaning troops can control when they would self-detonate.

“That makes it far more safer eventually than the things that they are creating on their own,” Mr Austin said.

The mines are are electrically fused and powered by batteries so that when the battery runs out, they won’t detonate. They can become inert in anywhere from four hours to two weeks.

The defence secretary has announced emergency cuts to the UK military including the Royal Navy’s two amphibious assault ships, a frigate and 31 helicopters.

John Healy has blamed the disputed £22bn black hole left in the finances by the Tories. However, the Conservatives have warned that the cuts have come because Labour refuses to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence.

Mr Healey told MPs that Labour had “a dire inheritance” from the Tories in defence so needed to scrap six “outdated” defence projects which will save £500m over the next five years.

“We have begun to fix the foundations going forward,” he added. “For too long our soldiers, sailors and air staff have been stuck with using outdated equipment.”

The emergency statement caught MPs by surprise on Wednesday and has left doubts over whether the UK could take back the Falklands if they were invaded again.

Our political editor David Maddox has the full report: