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UK ‘likely already wargaming’ response to potential Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine

The UK is “likely already wargaming” its response to a potential Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine, experts have claimed.

Vladimir Putin made his clearest threat of nuclear warfare during a national address in September, warning the west that Russia had “various weapons of destruction” and was “not bluffing” about their potential use.

Russia has intensified attacks in Ukraine since the threat, most recently firing dozens of missiles at apartment blocks in multiple cities in apparent retaliation for an explosion on the Crimea-Russia bridge.

In a bid to bolster Moscow’s declining war effort following successful Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kharkiv, Mr Putin also appointed “brutal” new senior commander Sergei Surovikin, believed to be responsible for potential war crimes in Syria.

As the west weighs the possibility of nuclear weapons being used by Russia, experts say the UK would already be modelling its responses to different scenarios of escalation in the war.

“The UK is alerted,” Kings College London military historian Dr Simon Anglim told The Independent. “I strongly suspect the UK is already thinking about potential responses, it’s been thinking about this since the war began.”

Dr Anglim added that defence officials have been tasked with assessing the seriousness of Russian threats and deciding what should be considered “sabre rattling” and what could be a genuine warning of attacks to come.

“There are two schools of thought with this,” Dr Anglim said. “One of them is that Putin is just a bumbling gangster, a blustering conman, Russia’s Trump, But the other view is that he’s very serious indeed about what he says.

“That’s a cause for concern for the government in confronting him but I would say we already have contingency plans in place.”

Dr Anglim said that in the case that Russia did use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, it’s likely that a coordinated Nato response would follow as opposed to the UK acting on its own.

He explained that any UK nuclear response is very unlikely and would only be an “absolute desperate last resort” in a situation where Britain felt there was a “clear, existential and immediate threat to the UK.”

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British Army officer and commanding officer of the UK’s Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, agreed with Dr Anglim’s assessment.

He added that the west, including the UK, needed to move away from “strategic ambiguity” on the consequences of a Kremlin nuclear attack and be more direct about their response to further aggression against Ukraine.

“Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons are on missile launchers and they’re in silos a long way from Ukraine at the moment,” Mr de Bretton-Gordon told The Independent.

“If they were to use them, they’d have to move these trucks a couple of hundred miles, and move the bombs to aircraft and we’d see that.

Ukraine’s president Zelensky has said Russians are ‘already being prepared’ for nuclear conflict

“We should say to Putin ‘if you start moving those weapons to a place they could be used against Ukraine we will take them out conventionally’,” he added.

Mr de Bretton-Gordon also warned of the possibility of Russia carrying out an “improvised nuclear attack” which could involve striking Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant – the largest nuclear facility in Europe – which lost external power twice last week.

“After the Crimea bridge attack, Mr Putin said he will destroy Ukraine’s electricity supply. Most of the electricity in Ukraine comes from nuclear so it seems he’s threatening to blow up nuclear power stations,” he said.

“If you do that you don’t get a nuclear explosion as per a nuclear weapon but you could get contamination. Chernobyl is an example of that but we’re talking many times the size of Chernobyl.

Russia intensified its shelling of Ukraine this week

Vladimir Putin said he was ‘not bluffing’ about using all weapons at his disposal to protect Russian territory

Xural.com

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