CONTINUED (2/2)

President Zelensky suggested to The Guardian in May that in reality Downing Street was waiting on the Americans to give their approval.

A final decision by the UK and other partners depended on “consensus”, with the position in Washington being crucial, he suggested. “You know how it works,” he added.

Colby Badhwar, an independent military analyst, told The Times: “The Biden administration continues to maintain their policy that Ukraine is not permitted to use long range fires to strike deep into Russia; a prohibition that applies not just to the American ATACMS, but the British Storm Shadow as well.” Although Ukraine is not permitted to use Storm Shadow to fire at targets inside Russia, it is however allowed to use other western weapons and British Challenger 2 tanks have already been spotted in the Kursk region.

Military authorities in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk on Friday urged civilians to speed up their evacuation because the Russian army was quickly closing in on what has been one of Moscow’s key targets for months.

Pokrovsk officials said in a Telegram post that Russian troops were “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”
Ukrainian troops have been trying to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine by launching a bold cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. But Zelenskyy warned Thursday that Pokrovsk and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region were “facing the most intense Russian assaults.”