Good morning. Keir Starmer’s visit with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon is undoubtedly the most high-profile meeting with a foreign leader of his premiership so far – but for today, at least, the overwhelming focus is on one issue: the war in Ukraine.
At stake, after a week of intense diplomatic choreography between the two sides, is an agreement reported by the Guardian on Wednesday to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of western-supplied long-range missiles to attack targets deep inside Russia. The gravity of finalising that decision was underlined by comments from Vladimir Putin yesterday: any such move, he said, “would mean that Nato countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia”.
