US can’t supply more missiles to Ukraine to keep ‘healthy reserve’, say officials

Authorities say US and Nato may conserve long-range weapons in case of ‘outbreak of fighting’ in Europe or Asia

The US can’t supply many more long-range missiles to Ukraine because it needs to keep a “healthy reserve” to face down other threats including possible war with China, US officials have said.
They said that with tension rising around the world, the US and Nato needed to conserve missiles in case there was an “outbreak of fighting in either Europe or Asia”.
One unnamed Pentagon official told the New York Times that Ukraine would be better off investing in its long-range drone programme, which has struck airfields, radar stations and oil refineries as far away as Siberia.
The warning over missile supplies comes as Joe Biden decides whether to allow Ukraine to fire Western-made missiles into Russia, including British Storm Shadow missiles.
After a meeting at the White House with Sir Keir Starmer on Friday, Mr Biden said that he hadn’t come to a final decision. “We are working on that right now,” he said earlier in the week.
At their meeting, the two leaders also discussed the threat from Iran which is now supplying short-range missiles to Russia in return for technical support. One subject of conversation was Moscow’s potential support for Tehran’s nuclear weapons programme.
No announcement will likely be made on the approval for strikes until “the first missile lands”, one Western official told PBS on condition of anonymity.
On the issue of giving Ukraine permission to fire Western missiles into Russia, Russian officials said that they thought that the decision had already been made.
Sergei Rybakov, the deputy foreign minister of Russia, said: “We know that the relevant decisions were made some time ago, and signals of this kind were transmitted to Kyiv.”
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, wants permission to fire missiles into Russia to press forward Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region and destroy Russian airfields. 
Highly accurate long-range missiles have been one of Ukraine’s most effective weapons, destroying Russian command centres and supply depots behind the frontlines in occupied Ukraine. 
Grant Shapps and Sir Ben Wallace, both former defence ministers, accused Mr Biden and Sir Keir of playing into Putin’s hands by delaying a decision.
Mr Shapps said: “Starmer’s hesitation to support Ukraine while waiting for US approval risks emboldening Putin and seriously undermines Kyiv’s chances of victory.” 
The US has been hesitant about permitting Ukraine because it is worried about escalating the war and has said that Ukraine doesn’t, in any case, have enough missiles to make a strategic difference.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, said on Thursday that the West would be at war with Russia if Ukraine fired Western missiles at Russia and warned that this was a “red line” that should not be crossed.
This was backed up by Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s security council, on Saturday who said that the Kremlin would turn Kyiv into a “grey melted blot” with either a nuclear strike or a strike using new military technologies if Ukraine fired Western long-range missiles at Russia.
“What arrogant Anglo-Saxon dimwits fail to admit is that you can only test someone’s patience for so long,” he said on the Telegram social media app.
Also on Saturday, Russia and Ukraine completed one of their largest prisoner swaps of the war, the second in two days. Mr Zelensky said that this was a like-for-like swap with 103 prisoners handed over by each side.
“Our people are at home,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates is the main mediator of the prisoner swaps, which are seen as an important communication channel between Ukraine and Russia.
Photos of freed Ukrainian prisoners showed emaciated shaven-headed men draped in Ukrainian flags embracing each other, smiling. 
Driving across Ukraine on a coach, one freed Ukrainian soldier told an interviewer that he had no idea that Ukraine had launched the first invasion of Russia since World War II, capturing a swathe of the southern Kursk region.
The man gasped, laughed and clapped when the interviewer told him that the “war is now taking place in Russia”.
On the frontlines, reports said that Russian forces had launched a counterattack against Ukraine’s saliant in the Kursk region and that fighting was intensifying.