Ukraine war latest: UK Storm Shadow missiles used inside Russia for first time

Ukraine is believed to have used British-made Storm Shdaow long-range missiles inside Russia for the first time.

It comes days after Joe Biden gave the green light for Ukraine to use US-made long-range missiles to target Vlasimir Putin’s forces deep inside Russia, the first such missiles were used on Tuesday.

That opened the door for Britain to do the same, with the UK missiles relying on US targeting programmes.

The Ukranian military has fired a long-range Storm Shadow missile beyond Russia borders for the first time, according to reports.

The British-made missile, which Kyiv has so far been prohibited from using while it defends its territory against Putin’s invasion, was fired at Russia on Wednesday, Bloomberg cited an unnamed source as saying.

Meanwhile, images published by The Telegraph appear to show fragments of a Storm Shadow missile in Russia’s Kursk region.

The UK government has not yet commented.

Vladimir Putin has gifted dozens of animals – including a lion and two bears – to a zoo in North Korea, the latest in a series of gift exchanges as Russia relies on Pyongyang’s artillery and troops to bolster its invasion of Ukraine.

More than 70 animals, including an African lion and two brown bears, were sent by plane with veterinarians from Moscow’s zoo to be transferred to a zoo in Pyongyang.

The animals were “a gift from Vladimir Putin to the Korean people,” the Russian government said.

Steffie Banatvala reports:

Asian stocks were mostly lower on Tuesday, despite gains on Wall Street, as worries mounted over escalations in the Russia-Ukraine war.

U.S. futures edged higher while oil prices were little changed.

On Tuesday, Ukraine fired several American-supplied longer-range missiles into Russia, according to the official, marking the first such use in nearly 1,000 days of war. On the same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for Russia’s use of its nuclear weapons.

France’s Emmanuel Macron has said that China has an important role to play in avoiding nuclear escalation, after Russian president Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike.

Meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping in Rio de Janeiro as part of the G20 summit, Mr Macron said he asked him to put pressure on Mr Putin to end the war with Ukraine.

Mr Macron said North Korea’s decision to send troops to fight in Ukraine had raised the stakes for China, and that it should push for a de-escalation after Mr Putin’s decision to change Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the summit, the French president said he would invite Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk to France in February for an artificial intelligence summit.

Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are eating into US stockpiles of air defences, the top US admiral overseeing American forces in the Asia-Pacific region has warned.

“With some of the Patriots that have been employed, some of the air-to-air missiles that have been employed, it’s now eating into stocks and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” said Admiral Sam Paparo.

“Inherently, it imposes costs on the readiness of America to respond in the Indo Pacific region, which is the most stressing theater for the quantity and quality of munitions, because the PRC is the most capable potential adversary in the world,” he said, using an acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Russia has detained a German citizen who is suspected of explosives-smuggling and terrorism, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Wednesday.

Nikolai Gaiduk is accused of blowing up a pipe at a gas distribution station, the FSB said, in an attack in Russia’s Kaliningrad Baltic Sea exclave in March, using a home-made bomb.

He was arrested when later attempting to enter Kaliningrad from Poland. Authorities searched his car, finding 0.5 litres of liquid explosive.

The FSB said Gaiduk was born in 1967 and lives in Hamburg. He is accused of acting on instructions of a Ukrainian man also living in Hamburg.

“Currently, measures are being taken to identify and bring to justice the persons who assisted Gaiduk … in carrying out illegal activities,” the agency said.

The German Foreign Ministry is aware of the case, and the consulate general in St Petersberg has been in contact with Russian authorities.

For Ghulam, it began with a form handed to him by a colleague, offering him a way out. For more than 12 years, he had been part of an elite troop of Afghan special forces set up, trained and paid by the British government. Now, after being forced to flee the Taliban and leave his homeland for Iran, he worked long days in a recycling factory and had to evade police because of his undocumented status.

The fellow Afghan who gave Ghulam the form knew of his military background, and thought he might be open to an offer. For some in Ghulam’s situation, a form comes first; for others, it’s contact by phone from other Afghan veterans. Some have been approached face to face. But however it’s done, and whatever the terms, the offer to these elite UK-trained commandos is broadly the same: come to fight for Vladimir Putin’s Russian forces against Ukraine.

Russia staged a “massive information-psychological attack” on Ukraine by spreading a fake warning about an imminent mass air attack, Kyiv’s top spy agency said on Wednesday.

The fake warning purported to be from Ukrainian military intelligence, but Kyiv has confirmed the message was a hoax.

“A message is being spread via messengers and social networks … about the threat of a ‘particularly massive’ missile and bomb strike on Ukrainian cities today,” the Main Directorate of Intelligence said in a statement.

“This message is a fake, it contains grammatical errors typical of Russian information and psychological operations.”