Rishi Sunak welcomed Joe Biden to No 10 on Monday as the West was scrambling to agree a stance on Ukraine joining Nato.
The US president and Prime Minister put on a show of unity, to highlight Vladimir Putin’s “spectacular miscalculation” over the war, ahead of a two-day Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, starting on Tuesday.
Mr Biden insisted that the UK-US relationship is “rock solid” at the start of his Downing Street talks. He was warmly greeted by Mr Sunak, having arrived in his “Beast” vehicle in a high-security convoy at 10.35am.
But their warm words could not hide frictions in the US-UK relationship under the Biden administration, including over the speed of Ukraine becoming a Nato member, supplying it with cluster munitions and Washington not supporting Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to be the military alliance’s next secretary general, as well as on Brexit.
Mr Biden also met the King on Monday, having missed his Coronation in May, which was being seen as the main focus of the president’s UK visit.
At Windsor Castle, the 80-year-old president and the 74-year-old King are set to discuss how to help to boost private investment to combat climate change, a threat both say is existential.
“The president has huge respect for the King’s commitment on the climate issue in particular. He has been a clarion voice on this issue,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
On Ukraine, Washington appears to be closer to Berlin than London on the pace for Kyiv to join Nato, with the UK seeming to support a more speedy path. Britain, unlike the US, has made clear it will not be supplying Ukraine with cluster munitions.
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said Britain and other allies would be “heading to Vilnius showing a very united front to Putin”. Emphasising that the Russian president had under-estimated the West’s resolve to support Ukraine in the long term, he told GB News: “Putin made a spectacular miscalculation as well as of course doing something which is truly heinous and appalling.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken and Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said last night that they had discussed the Nato summit and Kyiv’s counter-offensive.
Mr Kuleba tweeted: “With 48 hours left, we are working to make its final decisions a win for all: Ukraine, Nato, and global security.” In an interview yesterday, Mr Biden told CNN: “We have to lay out a rational path for Ukraine to be able to qualify to be able to get into Nato. But I think it’s premature to say, to call for a vote, you know, in now, because there’s other qualifications that need to be met.”
Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has struck a different tone, voicing support for fast-tracking Ukraine joining Nato, even if this does not happen while the war is ongoing. Tensions have also been exposed between the US and UK after Mr Biden said he flew to Belfast in April to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” over the Good Friday Agreement, on its 25th anniversary, in a post-Brexit row over Northern Ireland’s trading arrangements.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said her country’s troops were “consolidating gains” after seizing back more than 74 square miles of territory from Putin’s army.
