Reuters / NATO's Stoltenberg says each country must decide if Ukraine can use its long-range missiles on Russia

• The outgoing head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday he welcomed talks on Ukraine's use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russian territory, but any decision on the issue would have to be made by individual allies. 

• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and U.S. President Joe Biden held talks in Washington on Friday on whether to allow Kyiv to use the long-range missiles against targets in Russia. No decision was announced.

• President Vladimir Putin has said the West would be directly fighting Russia if it allowed Ukraine to strike with Western-made long-range missiles. 

• Asked about possible Russian retaliation, Stoltenberg said there were "no risk-free options in the war".

   

Politico - Andrew McDonald and Hannah Roberts / Even Britain’s left-wing government seeks lessons from Giorgia Meloni

• The British prime minister spent Monday on a charm offensive in Rome, seeking tips and tricks as he attempts to tackle a burning issue for his new government — irregular migration across the English Channel. 

• In their joint press conference, Meloni revealed Starmer had shown “great interest” in Italy’s controversial Albania migrant processing scheme. In his own remarks Starmer, however, was keen to talk about Italy’s work on tackling the problem “upstream” rather than the more contentious Albania policy, which is due to go live shortly. 

• Beyond promising to scrap the Rwanda asylum seeker deportation policy inherited from the last government — Starmer has declared himself no fan of “gimmicks” — Labour is yet to set out key planks of its migration-tackling plan, with the exception of its headline, and vague, commitment to “smash the [people smuggling] gangs” working to transport asylum seekers across the Channel. 

• Humanitarian groups including as Médecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam Italia and SOS Humanity have accused Rome of the “systematic obstruction of civilian search and rescue activities,” by impounding vessels, blaming the government for more deaths.

   

Al Jazeera / Israel’s Netanyahu announces expanded war goals to include Lebanon border

• The decision to include “the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes” was approved during an overnight meeting of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, his office said in a statement on Tuesday. 

• The decision comes a day after Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant told a visiting United States envoy that “military action” was the “only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities”. 

• Along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, Hezbollah claimed “dozens” of attacks on Israeli positions on Monday, and Israel’s military said it struck “terrorist” targets in Lebanon. 

• Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said on Saturday that his group had “no intention of going to war”, but if Israel does “unleash” one, “there will be large losses on both sides”.

The Guardian / Meta bans Russian state media outlets over ‘foreign interference activity’

• Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms. 

• “After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.

• The ban marks a sharp escalation in actions by the world’s biggest social media company against Russian state media, after it spent years taking more limited steps such as blocking the outlets from running ads and reducing the reach of their posts.

• On Friday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.
   

Our opinion reads for today:

• Bloomberg - Andreas Kluth / Biden Must Let Zelenskiy Bomb Putin to the Negotiating Table
• The Washington Post - Ro Khanna / Protect Trump, whatever the cost