“This is not the moment to delay any support to Ukraine, this is the moment to double down on our support. Give them what they need,” Mr Johnson told Fox News.

The Kremlin said on Wednesday that longer-range rockets reportedly included in an upcoming package of military aid from the United States to Ukraine would escalate the conflict but not change its course.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also told reporters that there were no plans for Russian president Vladimir Putin to hold talks with US president Joe Biden.

The US package of military aid, worth $2.2bn ($1.8bn), is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time, two US officials briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Such rockets would allow Ukraine – which has said it plans to retake all of its territory by force, including annexed Crimea – to strike deeper into Russian-held territory.

Russian forces are encircling Bakhmut and are battling to take control of the highway that connects the city to the nearby town of Chasiv Yar, a Russian-installed official in eastern Ukraine said on Wednesday.

“Bakhmut is now operationally surrounded, our forces are closing the ring around the city,” said Yan Gagin, an aide to senior Russian-installed official Denis Pushilin.

“Fighting for control of the Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut highway is now underway,” Gagin said on state television.

Reuters could not independently verify his assertions.

Russia claims to have taken control of several locations around Bakhmut, where its troops and mercenaries from the Wagner group have been locked in a battle of attrition with Ukrainian forces for months.

Prominent Russian journalist Alexander Nevzorov was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail by a Moscow court on Wednesday after it found him guilty of spreading ‘fake news’ about the Russian army, state media reported.

Investigators opened a case against Nevzorov last year for posts on social media in which he accused Russia‘s armed forces of deliberately shelling a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an assertion Moscow said was false.

Nevzorov’s wife wrote on Instagram in March that she and her husband were in Israel.

Spain plans to send between four and six German-built Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine, newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified government sources.

The actual number will depend on the condition of the battle tanks in storage and how many other countries will eventually supply to Ukraine, the sources told El Pais.

A spokesperson for the Spanish Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kyiv secured pledges from the West this month to supply main battle tanks to help fend off Russia‘s invasion with Moscow mounting huge efforts to make incremental advances in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine‘s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Tuesday his government expects to receive 120 to 140 Western tanks from a coalition of 12 countries in a first wave.

Kuleba said those tanks would include German Leopard 2, British Challenger 2 and U.S. M1 Abrams tanks, and that Ukraine was also “really counting” on supplies of French Leclerc tanks being agreed.

Sanctions on Russia “might not be having the impact the West had hoped” a financial expert has said after the International Monetary Fund predicted that Britain would see lower growth than Russia in the year ahead.

My colleague William Mata speaks to experts on why Russia’s economy is continuing to grow despite Western efforts:

Ukraine’s Kherson remains the most consistently shelled city outside of the Donbas region, the British defence ministry said today.

Russia’s precise rationale for expending its strained ammunition stocks here is unclear, the MoD added.

Russian forces had to exit Kherson in October last year in a massive territorial loss after capturing the region for more than eight months of the war, but the occupying forces have continued to attempt multiple attacks to recapture the strategic city.

“In recent days, some of the most intense shelling in the conflict has likely taken place along the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine.

This has included continued Russian shelling of Kherson city with artillery firing from the east of the river,” the ministry pointed out.

It added that local authorities reported another three civilians killed in Kherson on Sunday, while two foreign-owned ships moored on the river were damaged, causing an oil spill.

“However, commanders are likely partially aiming to degrade civilian morale and to deter any Ukrainian counter-attacks across the Dnipro River,” according to the defence ministry’s latest intelligence update.

The US is packing more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine and is including longer-range rockets in a first for the war-hit country along with other munition and weapons, said two US officials aware of the matter.

This tranche of military aid, expected to amp up Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian attacks, will also include support equipment for Patriot air defence systems, precision guided-munitions and Javelin anti-tank weapons, the officials said.

They added that the announcement for this aid is expected as soon as this week.

Russia’s refusal to allow on-the-ground inspections to resume is endangering the New Start nuclear treaty and US-Russian arms control overall, the Biden administration said last night.

The finding was delivered to Congress and summarised in a statement by the State Department. It follows months of more hopeful US assessments that the two countries would be able to salvage cooperation on limiting strategic nuclear weapons despite high tensions over Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Read the full story here:

Olympic gold medalist Wladimir Klitschko – brother to the mayor of Kyiv – has joined Ukraine’s fight against the International Olympics Committee’s plans to let some Russians compete at the 2024 Paris Summer Games.

Graham Dunbar reports: