Truss so feared radiation from Putin nuclear strike that she ‘obsessed’ over wind charts
WHEN Liz Truss was told, during the dying days of her mayfly Premiership, that the security services were picking up intelligence that Vladimir Putin might use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine it sent a chill down her spine.
The UK Prime Minister was still adjusting to getting used to a new mobile phone number, for the first time in over a decade, as a result of a hack suspected to have been backed or orchestrated by the Kremlin, potentially giving Putin access to information about Western support for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime.
In particular, Ms Truss was told that Putin might explode a weapon in the air above the Black Sea, which would show the West what he was capable of without triggering a full-scale nuclear war.
As with the Chernobyl accident in 1986, the radiation could pose a threat to Europe if it blew in this direction: as a
‘Did protect and serve plan need to be triggered?’
result, colleagues say Ms Truss became fixated with the weather forecast.
A source said: ‘Liz was obsessed with the prevailing wind, watching the forecasts to see if she needed to trigger a Protect and Survive plan.’
Protect and Survive was a public information campaign on civil defence between 1974 and 1980 which advised the public on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack. It detailed the warning signs when an attack was imminent and advised on what to do immediately after an attack, describing the effects of nuclear fall-out and how to plan for survival.
The UK intelligence officials warned Putin might ‘go nuclear’ after Ukranian forces blew up the road bridge connecting Russia and Crimea, something Putin had said would ‘cross a red line’ and prompt ‘judgment day’.
He also said in a televised speech that if Western forces endangered the ‘integrity’ of
Russian territory then ‘we will certainly use all the means at our disposal’, adding: ‘This is not a bluff.’
President Zelensky was also told by his intelligence agencies that there was a ‘very high’ risk Russia might use tactical nuclear weapons.
The source added: ‘Liz was terrified that news about her phone being hacked would come out because it looked almost symbolic of national weakness. Then, as her government was collapsing, she had to worry about nuclear clouds as well. We found her watching the weather forecasts with unusual interest’.
Radiation-detecting equipment is scattered across Europe as an early-warning system in the event of an accident or the deliberate use of a nuclear weapon.
Meanwhile cloud-mapping experts share information between countries about radiation direction.
The Mail on Sunday can separately reveal that the UK Home Office is working with police to bolster the country’s ‘radiological and nuclear detection equipment’.
A UK Home Office tender contract, published two weeks ago, seeks an ‘information system for operational planning, alerting, reporting and managing’ nuclear threats.
The contract is focused on
‘inland detection’ against possible terrorist attacks using radiological or nuclear materials. Officials want to understand the latest technology for detecting radiation levels, including ‘isotope identification and dose rates’.
Yesterday Russia accused the UK of being involved in a Ukranian drone attack on Russia’s Black Sea fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
The UK Ministry of Defence said was an example of Russia ‘peddling false claims on an epic scale’.