The Kremlin has accused Britain of siding with Ukraine in the war and said the latest missile announcement would fuel the fire of the conflict.<\/p>\n
As Prime Minister Andy Burnham was visiting Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Britain of doing everything it could to prevent any progress towards an eventual peace deal after it was reported UK-made drones were carrying out attacks on Russian soil.<\/p>\n
\u201cBritain is involved in this war on the side of the Kyiv regime,\u201d he said. \u201cBritain methodically and regularly adds fuel to the fire, and methodically and regularly hatches schemes to prevent even the slightest progress in the \u200bpeaceful settlement process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Andy Burnham was in Ukraine on his first official visit as UK Prime Minister, where he told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Britain was \u201c100 per cent behind you\u201d and condemned what he called \u201coutrageous threats\u201d coming out of Moscow.<\/p>\n
He arrived in Kyiv as Ukraine was marking its Independence Day. Mr Burnham is also reportedly handing over blueprints so Ukraine can build its own long-range missiles. <\/p>\n
Moscow warned London last week of unspecified \u201cconsequences\u201d for supplying drones to \u2060Kyiv, accusing Britain of deepening its involvement in the war following a report that British-made drones had been used for long-range strikes against Russia \u200bfor the first time.<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham said at the time that London was fully committed to supporting Ukraine in \u201cthis illegal war\u201d. <\/p>\n
Sir Richard Moore, the former head of MI6, told the BBC on Monday that Russia had a history of perpetrating attacks in the UK stretching back almost a decade. \u201cAll the UK is doing is supporting the Ukrainians’ right to defend themselves against aggression,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course we need to be mindful of Russian activity and I’m afraid the Russians do have us in their sights, and we have to make sure that we are resilient enough to defend ourselves appropriately against the sort of what is sometimes called ‘grey-zone activity’ from the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ambassador withdraws<\/p>\n
Russia’s embassy in London confirmed the country’s long-standing ambassador was withdrawn this summer. <\/p>\n
Andrey Kelin left last month after seven years in the UK capital in which he developed a combative profile, warning of how the country was implicated by its support for Ukraine. \u201cLondon\u2019s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer,\u201d declared one Telegram post by Mr Kelin. <\/p>\n
Mr Burnham used his first foreign policy speech to resist the Russian line. \u201cDespite Russia\u2019s outrageous threats to my country, we will continue our support for Ukraine,\u201d he said. \u201cUkraine has been Europe\u2019s protector, not a drain on our security but the front line in keeping Europe safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Burnham announced the UK would permit defence company MBDA to release classified information on British components of long-range Scalp missiles, so France and Ukraine can proceed with a plan for Ukrainian assembly of the missile.<\/p>\n
He is co-chairing a meeting with Mr Zelenskyy, as well as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron, who will join by video link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kremlin has accused Britain of siding with Ukraine in the war and said the latest missile announcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[11,1098,2149],"class_list":["post-32623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-standard","tag-story","tag-uk-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}