Keir Starmer meets with Joe Biden at White House as Putin warns Nato against letting Ukraine send long-range missiles – as it happened

In a one-on-one meeting at the White House on Friday, Joe Biden and Keir Starmer discussed pleas from Ukraine for their support to use long-range missiles in the war against Russia. No official position was announced after the roughly 20-minute meeting, during which the US president and UK prime minister also reportedly discussed challenges in the Middle East.

The meeting came after mounting pressure from both Ukraine and Russia about intervention in the war.

“We are now in the third year of a full-scale war. After so much death, destruction and countless Russian war crimes, Putin can still afford to destroy life in Ukraine as he pleases, buy and produce missiles, bombs and artillery, and issue ultimatums to the world,” Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian leader, said in a post on X on Friday before the meeting. “He expects the world to fall for his madness.”

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin threatened that if the US and UK agreed to loosen restrictions on long-range strikes into Russia, it would be seen as an act of aggression signifying Nato countries were “at war”.

“This will mean that Nato countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia,” Putin told Russian reporters on Thursday. “And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

More on these discussions – and the decisions the countries come to – are expected in the coming weeks as leaders reconvene at the United Nations general assembly later this month.

This wraps our live coverage for today. You can continue to read our expert analysis and key updates here.

Thanks for tuning in with us as we gather the latest updates! Have a good night.

Here is where things currently stand:

• Keir Starmer arrived at the White House on Friday to meet with Joe Biden. The two leaders are expected to discuss the possibility of expanding Ukraine’s long-range missile capabilities.

• Volodymyr Zelenskiy met with American actor Michael Douglas and his son Dylan in Kyiv amid Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russia. In a post on X, Zelenskiy said they, alongside Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, discussed “the situation in our country, cooperation with partners, support for Ukraine, and the fourth Summit of Ladies and Gentlemen”.

• David Petraeus, the former CIA director, said Vladimir Putin is bluffing over his red line on long-range missiles and that there’s nothing more “conventionally that he can actually do that he’s not already doing”. Petraeus, speaking to the BBC, said the potential lifting of restrictions over the use of long-range weapons inside Russia was “long overdue” and “it’s never too little too late”.

• Antony Blinken said the US is imposing new sanctions on Russia over its role to “undermine democracies”. The US secretary of state said: “The actions we’re exposing today and the actions we exposed last week do not incorporate the full scope of Russia’s efforts to undermine democracies. Far from it.”

• European policy leaders are downplaying Vladimir Putin’s war threats over Ukraine’s potential allowance to expand its long-range missile usage. “It is necessary to take all events in Ukraine and on the Ukrainian-Russian front very seriously, but I would not attach excessive importance to the latest statements from president Putin,” said the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk. “They rather show the difficult situation the Russians have on the front,” he added.

• Boris Johnson met with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on Friday and renewed calls for Britain to allow the country to use Storm Shadow missiles against targets in Russia. “It is vital that Ukraine should be able to defend itself properly by stopping the appalling Russian attacks with glide bombs and now Iranian missiles,” the former UK prime minister said following the meeting.

• Germany’s chancellor has said he will not send long-range missiles to Ukraine, despite Ukraine’s insistence on the weapons. At a press conference on Friday, as reported by Agence France-Presse, Olaf Scholz said: “Germany has made a clear decision about what we will do and what we will not do. This decision will not change.”

• In contrast with Germany, Canada said on Friday that it fully supports Ukraine’s use of long-range weaponry in its war against Russia. Speaking to reporters, Justin Trudeau said that his country supports Ukraine’s use of the weapons to “prevent and interdict Russia’s continued ability to degrade Ukrainian civilian infrastructure”, Reuters reports.

In response to a question on what he thinks about Vladimir Putin’s comment on a “war with Russia” over the possibility of Ukraine’s expanded long-range missile capacity, Joe Biden said:

I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.

Keir Starmer has arrived at the White House before his meeting with Joe Biden. The UK prime minister and the US president are expected to discuss the possibility of expanding Ukraine’s long-range missile capabilities.

Phillip Inman

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will send staff to Moscow next week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, in a move that has prompted anger and dismay across European capitals.

Officials of the Washington-based organisation will travel to the Russian capital and meet “stakeholders” before publishing an assessment of the economy and providing recommendations about how the Kremlin might improve its economic handling and tackle issues such as the climate crisis.

After Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the IMF stopped its annual consultations with Russia. The organization said it was a “mutual obligation” to carry out an article IV review of a member country and that the process was only suspended because of the volatility of economic data. The situation in Russia was now “more settled”.

On Friday, nine European countries protested against the IMF’s plans, saying it would damage the reputation of the Washington-based fund to resume dialogue with a country that had invaded another.

“We would like to express our strong dissatisfaction with such IMF plans,” the finance ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Poland said in a letter to the IMF managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, seen by Reuters.

Antony Blinken said the US is imposing new sanctions on Russia over its role to ‘undermine democracies’.

The US secretary of state said:

Today, we’re imposing sanctions on three entities and two individuals for Russia’s covert global influence operations, including interference in Moldova’s democracy and its upcoming elections.

The actions we’re exposing today and the actions we exposed last week do not incorporate the full scope of Russia’s efforts to undermine democracies. Far from it.

Russia’s weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world. In response, today, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada are launching a joint diplomatic campaign to rally allies and partners around the world to join us in addressing the threat posed by RT and other machinery of Russian disinformation and covert influence.”