Leaked Putin files reveal likely nuclear targets in event of NATO war

A terrifying secret hit list of sites around the UK that the Russian navy would target with nuclear missiles in the event of a war with NATO has come to light. Prime targets by Putin 's forces within the British Isles include a shipyard in Cumbria and an unknown site near Edinburgh, according to the leaked papers. Altogether, 32 targets around Europe are named as potential target sites for the Russian navy within the dossier, which predates the invasion of Ukraine, the Financial Times reports.

Maps contained within the files show targets beyond Western Europe and across the globe, including Romania and Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, China, North and South Korea and Japan. The unnamed target in Cumbria could be the Royal Navy's submarine shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, while a shipyard at Rosyth, just outside of the Scottish capital, where Royal Navy aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales were built, could be the target there, The Sun reports. It shows that Moscow would be ready to use nuclear weapons in the early stages of a conflict against its adversaries. Pictured: BAE Systems, where many of the ships are constructed.

Drawn up between 2008 and 2014, the dossier of 29 documents shows that Russia has the capability to transport the nuclear weapons on surface ships, in spite of the risk of accidents that this could present. In 1991, the Soviet Union and the US signed an agreement to remove such ships. The navy, according to the document, is primed for ad hoc attacks, or pre-emptive strikes and 'massive missile strikes . . . from various directions'. Experts who have looked over the dossier said it tallied with Nato analysts' view of the threat posed Putin's regime, its capacity to strike across Europe and how quickly Russia would resort to using nuclear weapons.

The nation's Baltic Fleet based at Kaliningrad would be in prime position to launch weapons towards France and Germany, the dossier adds. Former Nato official William Alberque, who now works at the Stimson Center in Washington DC, said that while maps drawn up for instructional rather than operational use show 32 targets, the sample was just a tiny portion of 'hundreds, if not thousands, of targets mapped across Europe . . . including military and critical infrastructure targets'. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, warned that Russia sees nuclear arms as 'war-winning weapons'.

He said: 'They're going to want to use them, and they're going to want to use them pretty quickly.' Tactical nuclear weapons are less destructive than the larger 'strategic' weapons which can hit long-range targets, but are nevertheless more potent than the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. The list has been revealed as Russia openly attempts to intimidate the West. Earlier this month, it was reported that Russian troops practiced installing dummy warheads onto launchers in the latest nuclear weapons drills intended as a threat to the West over its support for Ukraine.

Footage showed a military unit armed with Iskander-M operational-tactical missile systems carrying out the third stage of exercises ordered by Vladimir Putin. The Russian Defense Ministry said the drills would prepare the army and air force for the combat use of non-strategic nuclear weapons. This includes equipping launch vehicles with missiles 'and covertly advancing to designated position areas in preparation for conducting electronic launches'.

In an earlier rehearsal, Putin's forces carried out nuclear drills with hulking Yars mobile missile launchers , each carrying warheads with a force six times the strength of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Naval forces carried out similar drills, practicing 'hitting the button' on a warship believed to be in the Baltic Sea. The drills came as the US announced fresh sanctions against the Kremlin, prompting Russia's deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev to declare that Moscow should inflict 'maximum harm on the USA and their '[expletive] allies' as tensions escalate between Russia and Ukraine's foreign backers.

Russian ally Belarus has also been involved in the tactical nuclear tests. Putin supplied Belarus with such weapons. Conventional versions of the missile have been used in Ukraine. Troops were also seen loading a missile onto a MiG-31 as part of the drills. Moscow has claimed Putin ordered the drills tactical nuclear drills to 'cool the hot heads in Western capitals'. It followed French President Emmanuel Macron hinting at sending European troops to fight in Ukraine earlier this year. Former British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron also said Kyiv had the right to use weapons provided by London to strike targets inside Russia.

Both statements infuriated warmonger Putin who is struggling to make significant progress in his invasion of Ukraine. The Iskander-M used in the most recent drills is a short-range ballistic missile system with the capability to carry both conventional and non-strategic - or battlefield - nuclear warheads. One of the most advanced tactical missile systems in Russia's arsenal, it has a range of 250-310 miles, reaching speeds of up to Mach 6-7.

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