“Cornered rat” Vladimir Putin will likely be eyeing Britain as one in every of his first targets, an professional has warned.
The harrowing menace of such devastating strike motion has all the time loomed within the background ever for the reason that Russian despot launched an all out conflict in Ukraine two years in the past this weekend. With the Kremlin holding a lot of the world’s nuclear warheads, the West has been hesitant to take part in consequence. Many have additionally been left questioning why the dictator hasn’t already pressed the button if he was going to make use of nukes.
Professor Matt Qvortrup, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Coventry University informed the Mirror: “The situation is not as rosy as we’d like it to be and especially not here because we would be a target, I’m afraid.”
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He added: “I remember the time when you would wake up in a cold sweat in the ’80s because you thought we’re going to be nuked by the Russians. I think we are in a position which is as dangerous, certainly for Europe, as we were back then.”
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
It comes after the Ministry of Defence (MoD) this week confirmed an “anomaly occurred” throughout a Trident train that came about final month on board the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Vanguard. A supply claimed the incident noticed the dummy missile depart the sub “but it just went plop, right next to them”.
Prof Anthony Glees, an enormous mind on safety on the University of Buckingham, informed the Mirror this week that Putin is “laughing at us right now”. He mentioned concerning the mess-up: “Terribly embarrassing at best, devastating to our national security at worst. The top brass in the Navy have got a lot of explaining to do.”
But Prof Qvortrup reckons the blunder was “taken out of context” and we should not assume Trident is garbage like one thing from Dad’s Army. He says the UK’s nukes aren’t robust sufficient to scare off the Kremlin. He added: “What is more fundamental is the kind of missiles we have on Trident and those missiles – ballistic missiles – aren’t the most sophisticated type – they can be shot down from the ground. Not that I’m saying it’s easy. You can compare them to cruise missiles – which Russia has and the Americans have – that are literally flying by themselves…but we don’t have those.”
(Image: Getty Images)
“When we upgraded Trident, we should have upgraded properly, but at the time that would have been impossible to do. My argument back then, if we have to have nuclear weapons, at least have proper ones. At the moment we have nuclear weapons that aren’t a credible threat to what the Russians have.”
“We’ve got the gloves on, we look like fighters – but we’re pretending to be fighters. I’m not saying Putin is going to do it, but there is a danger that he might do this and I think that that danger is greater, personally, than almost ever before. In Britain, we’ve been very on the front foot in Ukraine. They’re [Russia] not going to nuke the Poles, somebody who is close by because the wind is going to blow radioactive dust in their face. We would be one of the first targets.”
He added: “Nuclear weapons are a terrible thing in every sense of the word, but they are the sort of thing where you think twice about going to war. That deterrent would have prevented the war in Ukraine. We don’t have a credible nuclear deterrent to the Russians.”
He referred to a narrative that Putin himself is reported to have informed himself a couple of time when he was a schoolboy and had cornered a rat in his dad and mom’ basement and was poking it with a stick. “The rat was totally panicked and jumped up and bit him in the neck,” he added
“When cornered, you do irrational things,” he defined. “Putin himself has told that story and I think to a degree Putin is the rat and is someone who when cornered will do things not necessarily rational and that is the greatest danger. If the rat is in the corner with nuclear weapons we should be not just afraid but very afraid.”
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