International tensions over the war in Ukraine have escalated with the US warning about a potential Russian air strike on its embassy in Kyiv.The warning follows the first use of US-supplied missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia after US President Joe Biden granted permission to Volodymyr Zelensky’s forces.
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00:00I'm not surprised because we've seen escalation from Vladimir Putin when he
00:05has every opportunity after a thousand days to de-escalate. But it is a shocking
00:09escalation on behalf of Vladimir Putin and this is something we should take
00:13very very seriously. What does that mean for the Brits there? We're doing
00:16everything we can as you can imagine. I won't go into operational matters. Are we closing our embassy?
00:20Well these things will be dealt with by the Ministry of Defence. They are looking
00:25very very carefully at the situation. We will do whatever it takes to keep our
00:29people safe. It will be based on the evidence and the intelligence that we
00:32have at any moment. Could it be reasonable to say that you are looking
00:36at potentially doing the same given what the US is doing? As you can imagine every
00:40day we're assessing all of the evidence the intelligence brings to us and our
00:44relationship with Kiev, with the United States is very very tight. It is
00:47iterative. We are constantly making assessments about all of the people,
00:52civilians and the people working on behalf of our government there. Our
00:56diplomats are working incredibly well in Ukraine. I have absolute fulsome praise
01:03for all the work they do every day, day in day out to support Ukraine in their
01:08hour of need. Okay, talk to me about what we're going to do about a British-made
01:11long-range missiles. Are we going to allow them to be used? I can't give
01:16operational information at the moment on these sorts of things because to do so
01:20it would benefit Vladimir Putin more than anyone else. But we are doing
01:24everything we can possibly do to support Ukraine in its hour of need. This was an
01:28illegal war. It was unwarranted. Vladimir Putin should never have done it. It is
01:33now a thousand days since this conflict started. He really should de-escalate
01:37because to end this war it is in his power to do it today.