The British Army is ready to fight Russia “tonight” if it invades another European nation in addition to Ukraine, a top military official declared.
Lieutenant General Sir Rob Magowan, the deputy chief of the defence staff, insisted Britain would never shy away from defending an ally amid growing nuclear strike threats from Vladimir Putin.
On Thursday, Putin’s troops used a new ballistic weapon in Ukraine which he said was in response to the UK and US allowing missiles they supplied to Kyiv being used to strike Russian targets.
Sir Rob told the House of Commons defence committee: “If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight.
“I don’t think anybody in this room should be under any illusion that if the Russians invaded Eastern Europe tonight, then we would meet them in that fight.”
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has said that “we will continue” to see “aggressive, blustering” language from Putin, which she told Sky News was “completely unacceptable”.
In a televised address, Russian president Putin said: “We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
The UK is believed to have allowed its Storm Shadow missiles to be used by Ukrainian forces within the Kursk region of Russia, while the US has given permission for its ATACMS weapons to be fired at targets in Putin’s country.
Putin confirmed Russia has tested the new intermediate-range weapon in an attack on Dnipro in response.
The US said the new and experimental intermediate-range missile is based on Russia’s existing RS-26 Rubezh.
Its range far outstrips that of newly authorised US and British-supplied arms, which can hit targets around 250-300km away.
The distance from Moscow to London is around 2,500km (1553 miles), suggesting the range of the new missile could threaten the UK.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia’s use of the new weapon was “a clear and severe escalation in the scale and brutality of this war”.
“[This] is yet more proof that Russia has no interest in peace,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Putin is not only prolonging the war - he is spitting in the face of those in the world who genuinely want peace to be restored.”
