President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House on Friday amid rising tensions with Russia, reaffirming their support for Ukraine but declining to publicly address urgent questions over whether Biden will pave the way for Ukraine to use Western-made weapons to strike deeper inside Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States is committed to standing with you to help Ukraine as it defends against Russia\u2019s onslaught of aggression,\u201d Biden told Starmer at the outset of their meeting. \u201cIt\u2019s clear that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not prevail in this war. The people of Ukraine will prevail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starmer said it was vital that the two allied nations work in tandem. \u201cI think the next few weeks and months could be crucial, very, very important, that we support Ukraine in this vital war of freedom,\u201d the prime minister said.<\/p>\n
But the two leaders said little about the biggest questions hanging over their meeting: whether American allies such as Britain might allow Ukraine to use their weapons to attack military targets deep inside Russia. Putin this week warned sharply against such a move, raising the stakes for Biden\u2019s decision on whether to support it and whether at some point to allow U.S.-made weapons to be used the same way.<\/p>\n
Hours before the meeting at the White House, Putin accused six British diplomats of spying and announced it had stripped them of accreditation. Putin also threatened that if Ukraine were to fire Western missiles into Russia, he would treat it as an attack by NATO and would respond accordingly, a posture that threatened to escalate the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this decision is made, it will mean nothing other than the direct involvement of NATO states, European states, in the war in Ukraine,\u201d Putin said in a television interview late Thursday.<\/p>\n
Vasily Nebenzya, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, warned the U.N. Security Council on Friday about the use of Western weapons deep inside Russia. \u201cThe facts are that NATO will be a direct party to hostilities against a nuclear power,\u201d Nebenzya said. \u201cI think you shouldn\u2019t forget about this and think about the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the outset of the war in February 2022, Biden has sought to balance his support for Ukraine with his desire to prevent the conflict from spiraling into a broader confrontation. With only four months left in office, Biden\u2019s delicate decision-making on the war will increasingly play into a foreign policy legacy that is likely to revolve in large part on his handling of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.<\/p>\n
That task has meant dealing with a variety of foreign leaders. Starmer, who was elected prime minister only two months ago, arrived at the White House in a motorcade on Friday afternoon, and he and Biden entered the Oval Office for photos before meeting in the Blue Room for their extended strategy session.<\/p>\n
Biden grew testy when a British reporter shouted a question, before the president could began speaking, about what he says in response to Putin\u2019s threats. \u201cI say, \u2018You be quiet until I speak. Okay? That\u2019s what I say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Biden then welcomed Starmer to the White House and thanked him for his leadership in backing Ukraine. But he largely ignored shouted questions from reporters, saying at one point in response to a question about what he thinks of Putin, \u201cI don\u2019t think much about Vladimir Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n
The official White House summary of the meeting stressed the opposition of the American and British leaders to the support that some countries are giving Russia. \u201cThey expressed deep concern about Iran and North Korea\u2019s provision of lethal weapons to Russia and \u2026 China\u2019s support to Russia\u2019s defense industrial base,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n
Russia has made threats against NATO when Western nations have ramped up their support for Ukraine, but he has generally failed to follow through. Starmer told British reporters ahead of his meeting with Biden that Ukraine had a right to defend itself against an illegal Russian invasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t seek any conflict with Russia. That\u2019s not our intention in the slightest,\u201d Starmer said. \u201cBut they started this conflict, and Ukraine\u2019s got a right to self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n
The British government also accused Russia of \u201ca significant escalation\u201d by imported ballistic weapons from Iran, saying that it was \u201cbolstering Putin\u2019s capability to continue his illegal war.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden and Starmer were also expected to discuss tensions in the Middle East, focusing on attempts for a cease-fire deal and the release of hostages in Gaza. The British announced this month that they were suspending some arms exports to Israel, citing \u201ca clear risk\u201d that the arms might be used in \u201cserious violation of international humanitarian law.\u2019<\/p>\n
Heading into the meeting, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that there would be little shift from the United States on allowing Ukraine to fire long-range missiles into Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no change to our view on the provision of long-range strike capabilities for Ukraine to use inside Russia, and I wouldn\u2019t expect any sort of major announcement in that regard coming out of the discussions, certainly not on our side,\u201d he said in a briefing with reporters.<\/p>\n
Kirby declined to comment directly on whether the U.S. would signal support for allowing the British or French to authorize use of their weapons for such long-range attacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have, and will continue to have, meaningful conversations with our allies \u2026 about what we\u2019re all doing to support Ukraine, about what can be done, what should be done, the pros and the cons of all these moves,\u201d Kirby said.<\/p>\n
Regarding Putin\u2019s warnings about NATO, he said that \u201cit\u2019s hard to take anything coming out of Putin\u2019s face at his word\u201d but added that the U.S. carefully monitors any Russian threats.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe starts brandishing the nuclear sword, yes, we constantly monitor that kind of activity,\u201d Kirby said. \u201cHe obviously has proven capable of aggression. He has obviously proven capable of escalation over the last now going on three years.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting at the White House occurred after Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with British foreign secretary David Lammy on a recent trip to Kyiv, a joint visit in which they heard from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n
Zelensky has been pressing for months for Western leaders to lift restrictions against using long-range missiles to target military sites in Russia.<\/p>\n
Biden was asked Tuesday whether the United States was ready to lift the restrictions. \u201cWe are working that out right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But administration officials said Friday that those reviews are still ongoing, with uncertainty over when or whether there might be any change in policy.<\/p>\n
At the same time, some senior congressional leaders have been urging Biden to make such a shift, saying Ukraine needs a freer hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn light of Putin\u2019s increasingly horrific attacks on civilian targets, it\u2019s time to lift restrictions on the use of long-range U.S.-provided weapons to allow Ukraine to reach high value Russian military targets,\u201d Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) said in a recent statement. \u201cOn the expectation that the Ukrainian government has demonstrated how these new authorities fit within its broader campaign strategy, I hope that the Biden Administration will swiftly grant these permissions to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen DeYoung and Missy Ryan contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met at the White House on Friday amid rising tensions with Russia, reaffirming their support for Ukraine but declining to publicly address urgent questions over whether Biden will pave the way for Ukraine to use Western-made weapons to strike deeper inside Russia. \u201cThe United States is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9554,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}