The news came as former first minister Carwyn Jones confirmed that a review of future Welsh Labour leadership contest rules would look at a cap on donations.
But each missile costs nearly US$1m (£767,000), so they tend only to be launched as part of a carefully planned flurry of much cheaper drones, sent ahead to confuse and exhaust the enemy’s air defences, just as Russia does to Ukraine.They have been used with great effect, hitting Russia’s Black Sea naval headquarters at Sevastopol and making the whole of Crimea unsafe for the Russian navy.
Justin Crump, a military analyst, former British Army officer and CEO of the Sibylline consultancy, says Storm Shadow has been a highly effective weapon for Ukraine, striking precisely against well protected targets in occupied territory."It’s no surprise that Kyiv has lobbied for its use inside Russia, particularly to target airfields being used to mount the glide bomb attacks that have recently hindered Ukrainian front-line efforts," he says.The UK has supplied Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine for months but, like the US, had not allowed Kyiv to use them to strike inside Russia.
But this changed after the Biden administration updated its rules, allowing comparable Atacms missiles to be used outside of Ukraine's borders.On Wednesday, it was confirmed Ukraine used UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles against targets inside Russia for the first time.
The Ministry of Defence has not yet publicly commented. But the UK government was known to have been supportive of allowing Ukraine more freedom to use missiles as it saw fit, although it had followed US policy.
Ukraine hopes the use of longer-range missiles inside Russia will help it defend the small chunk of Russian territory it currently occupies in the Kursk region. A major assault by Russian and Northern Korean troops is expected.Over the last week, as part of a series on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, we traced the path of migrants from Turkey to Bulgaria to the rest of Europe - the “biggest growth route” for those travelling into Europe, according to the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory - in search of what it will really take to “smash the gangs”.
When we talk about smuggling gangs, we tend to focus on the end of the process, such as the UK's relations with France, and on the movement of people across the English Channel, but our route marks the start of the journey: it’s where migrants first enter Europe.Along the way, we spoke to migrants who shared their complicated reasons for putting their lives in the hands of people smugglers. What soon became clear was the sheer magnitude of the government’s task.
The crowded shopping bazaar in the Istanbul district of Esenyurt is popular with the thousands of Syrian refugees who live in the region. “You can see Syrian shops here,” Husam, a Syrian refugee, told us as he showed us around after Friday prayers. “Many were not here in 2015. You have falafel, shawarma - many shops for Syrian food. It was a comfortable, safe place for Syrians.” But now the mood is darkening.“In the past few years it’s not safe any more,” he explains. “There are groups of racist people who don’t like refugees. On public transportation you cannot speak comfortably in Arabic on your phone. People are attacked [for] speaking Arabic.”