Minister: Putin has hostile intent

VLADIMIR Putin has ‘hostile intent’ towards Britain, the Defence Secretary said yesterday. Gavin Williamson called for the UK to wake up to the threat posed by Russia.

He warned that the Kremlin had developed a much more aggressive posture towards the UK in the past 12 months and the country should not sit submissively by.

With relations between Britain and Russia believed to be at an all-time low, Mr Williamson told MPs that the country needed to ‘match what Putin is doing with Russian forces’.

During defence questions in the Commons, he said: ‘Putin has made it quite clear that he has hostile intent towards this country.

‘We’ve been seeing the build-up of his forces across the Eastern Front and in terms of what they’re doing over many years now – we have to wake up to that threat and we have to respond to it.

‘And it is not just through nuclear weapons – our continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent is absolutely integral to maintaining the peace, but it is also through conventional armed forces. We have to match what Putin is doing with Russian forces.’

His comments came after he was asked by Labour’s Barry Sheerman about comments the Russian president had made in a stateof-the-nation speech last week.

Mr Sheerman pointed out that Mr Putin had basically announced ‘a new Cold War’.

Mr Putin boasted in his speech that Russia had developed an arsenal of invincible nuclear weapons that are immune to enemy detection.