UK confirms supply of Storm Shadow long-range missiles in Ukraine

The Storm Shadow cruise missile has a range of over 250km (155 miles), according to the manufacturer.

By contrast, the US-supplied Himars missiles used by Ukraine only have a range of around 80 km (50 miles).

The weapons will give Ukraine the “best chance” of defending itself, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.

They are fired from aircraft, so the longer range means Ukrainian pilots will be able to stay further from the frontlines.

Once launched, the Storm Shadow drops to low altitude to avoid detection by enemy radar, before latching onto its target with an infra-red seeker.

The announcement was made in the House of Commons by Mr Wallace. The decision follows repeated pleas from Ukraine for more weapons from the West.

Mr Wallace said the missiles would “allow Ukraine to push back Russian forces based on Ukrainian sovereign territory”.

He said the UK took the decision after Russia “continued down a dark path” of targeting civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.

Mr Wallace wrote to his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in December, he said, to warn that further attacks could result in the UK donating more capable weapons.

He said the missiles were “going into” or already in Ukrainian hands, and described the move as “calibrated and proportionate to Russia’s escalations”.

“None of this would have been necessary had Russia not invaded,” he said.

He said the missiles would be compatible with Ukraine’s existing, Sovietera planes and praised the technicians and scientists who made that possible.

But he warned the range of the Britishsupplied Storm Shadows was “not in the same league” as Russia’s own missile systems - with some of Moscow’s weapons being able to travel far further.

Earlier this year, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov insisted longerrange missiles would not be used to attack targets within Russia itself.

Trump CNN town hall: ‘Nonsense’Republican rivals blast performance

Donald Trump’s hour-plus appearance on a cable news town hall forum on Wednesday night was barely over when his political rivals - both announced and prospective - began firing out tweets, statements and press releases attacking the Republican front-runner for next year’s White House election.

The forum, hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, was a combative spectacle, with topics ranging from abortion to foreign policy to Mr Trump’s unfounded claims of 2020 election fraud and sympathy for those arrested for the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to launch his presidential campaign soon, honed in on the quarrelsome nature of the forum and his focus on relitigating the 2020 vote. A committee supporting his prospective bid released a statement calling the town hall an “hour of nonsense that proved Trump is stuck in the past”.

It went on to highlight his sometimes muddled answers on abortion and gun control - two issues of high importance to Republican primary voters.

“How does that make America great again?” the statement asked.

For Republican voters who aren’t solidly in the Trump camp at this point, the former president’s fixation with the 2020 election results - expressed early and often during the town hall - has proven to be a point of concern.

Winning presidential campaigns typically present a candidate’s vision for the future (Barack Obama’s “hope and change” and Mr Trump’s own 2016 “make American great again”), but Mr Trump’s 2024 bid often begins and ends with relitigating his electoral defeat.

Other Trump rivals found another target to attack. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who ran for president against Mr Trump in 2016, but became one of the first establishment politicians to endorse him, spotlighted the former president’s refusal to say who he wanted to win the war in Ukraine.

“Donald Trump says he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours tonight on CNN,” the possible 2024 candidate tweeted. “Despite how ridiculous that is to say, I suspect he would try to do it by turning Ukraine over to Putin and Russia. #Putin’sPuppet.”

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who recently launched his own presidential campaign, also targeted Mr Trump’s Ukraine position.

“Trump reminded everyone tonight of his support of Russia and his willingness to sell out Ukraine,” he tweeted. “A weak position that will not win the war.”

Highlighting Ukraine is an interesting choice, however, given that polls show a growing number of Republican voters are sceptical of continued US support for the war effort. Mr Trump may be more in step with the Republican base on this issue than these two critics.

If Mr DeSantis’ side viewed the whole event as nonsense, a number of media analysists and commentators agreed, although they placed the blame squarely on CNN for the format and setting of the event.

“Here’s what CNN did tonight: They produced a global television event for an unhinged pathological liar in front of an audience of sycophants and called it ‘news’,” former Republican strategist and vocal Trump critic Steve Schmidt tweeted. “It was an abomination.”

That was a view echoed by Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who wrote that CNN should “be ashamed of itself”.

Other Democratic Party officials monitoring the proceedings responded with barely concealed glee, however, promising to use clips of the former president’s performance in future attack ads. They also highlighted his abortion answer - taking credit for ending Roe v Wade’s abortion rights - as particularly damaging.

“That was a disaster for Trump,” a senior Democrat told CBS News. “The American people were just reintroduced to a wildly extreme and dangerous man who said he was honoured to overturn Roe. That’s the clip of the night.”

Mr Biden, responding on Twitter after the forum, kept it short.

“Do you want four more years of that?” Mr Biden asked. “If you don’t, pitch in to our campaign.”

For their part, however, Mr Trump’s campaign team claimed the evening was a success. Their candidate had more than an hour of prime-time attention before a crowd that gave him a standing ovation upon arrival, laughed at his jokes and applauded as he sparred with Ms Collins.

“At the end of the day I thought it was a win for the president,” Bryan Lanza, an adviser to Mr Trump, told the BBC. “He went into what was supposed to be a hostile environment, and he survived. I suspect that this town hall is going to make him stronger.”

“If we could strike at a distance of up to 300 kilometres, the Russian army wouldn’t be able to provide defence and will have to lose,” he told an EU meeting.

“Ukraine is ready to provide any guarantees that your weapons will not be involved in attacks on the Russian territory.”

In February, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was prepared to send longrange missiles to Ukraine, and the British government opened a bidding process for their procurement.

“Together we must help Ukraine to shield its cities from Russian bombs and Iranian drones,” Mr Sunak said then. “That’s why the United Kingdom will be the first country to give Ukraine longer-range weapons.”

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would take an “appropriate” military response to any British-supplied Storm Shadow weapons used by Ukrainian forces.

The Storm Shadow missile has been operated by both British and French air forces and has been used previously in the Gulf, Iraq and Libya.

The British-supplied missiles can only be fired by aircraft, but French missiles can be fired from ships and submarines.

Sanna Marin: Finnish PM to divorce as she prepares to leave office

Finland’s outgoing Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her husband Markus Raikkonen have filed for divorce.

“We are grateful for the 19 years together and our beloved daughter,” Ms Marin said on Instagram on Wednesday.

The couple married in 2020, when Ms Marin was leading the country’s pandemic response, and they share a five-year-old daughter.

She is due to leave office after her centre-left party lost the general election last month.

In a story posted on her Instagram account, Ms Marin said she is “still best friends” with Mr Raikkonen, who is a businessman and former professional footballer.

“We will continue to spend time together as a family and with each other,” she added.

Ms Marin, 37, became the world’s youngest prime minister when she took office in 2019. But she lost out in a tight race to the National Coalition Party, headed by Petteri Orpo, and the rightwing populist Finns Party, led by Riikka Purra, in April.

It was a bitter defeat for Ms Marin. While she increased her party’s seats and secured 19.9% of the vote, her coalition partners all lost significant numbers of seats.

Her government has formally resigned but will continue serving on a caretaker basis until the formation and appointment of a new government. Mr Orpo has said he hopes to conclude negotiations by June.

Ms Marin has enjoyed high polling throughout her time in office, with many praising her for steering Finland into Nato and navigating her country through the Covid-19 pandemic.

But she is also a polarising figure in Finland, with headlines pertaining to her personal life surfacing in recent months.

She has frequently been a target for criticism for her apparent love of partying - most notably when a video of her at a party singing, dancing and drinking circulated on social media in August 2022.

At the time, Ms Marin said the video had been filmed on “private premises” and that she had spent “an evening with friends”.

But the video prompted dozens of complaints alleging Ms Marin’s behaviour undermined Finland’s “reputation and security”.

She took a drugs test, which proved negative, to allay concerns about her behaviour and was cleared of misconduct by parliament a few months later.

The incident led to many women coming out in support of Ms Marin. In Finland, women took to social media to post videos of themselves dancing in solidarity.

Source: BBC