Operation Steadfast Defender roared into life at the start of 2024. Across the European Union, an entire continent joined forces for an unprecedented display of military strength. Not since the end of the Cold War has there been such a large military exercise in Europe. 90,000 soldiers, along with hundreds of tanks, aircraft, ships, as well as cyber and space warfare branches, all conducted war games across Europe. All 31 NATO nations, as well as partner Sweden, joined in the war games, putting their troops to the test in a huge and very public display of strength and unity. The exercise started in January with the goal of running through to May, with war games taking place at key strategic locations, including Finland, Estonia, Poland, and the Baltic states. Unsurprisingly, these locations were chosen, just as it is no secret who this display of power is aimed at. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 shook the world, but nowhere were the tremors felt more strongly than in Europe. Since the Second World War, the continent has experienced incredible stability and unity with its members. While not everyone agrees all of the time, and various countries have joined and left the EU over the years, war has been the last thing on the minds of most member nations. Not anymore. Some signs suggest that Putin is not planning on stopping at Ukraine. Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service issued a somber warning in February. Russia is preparing for a full-scale war with the West in the next decade. An attack on one NATO member is treated as an attack on all. Suppose Russia is to step across the border into any of its NATO members like Finland, Estonia, Poland or Lithuania, they will be met with the combined force of 31 nations, including long-time rival the U.S. And yet there is one nation in particular who are ramping up in preparation for war ahead of most of the other NATO members—the United Kingdom. So why is it that the UK, in particular, is preparing for war? They are hundreds of miles away from the Russian border and highly unlikely to be invaded by Putin. It may have something to do with a statement made by Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Putin’s, making a comment on the 19th of February 2024. “Attempts to return Russia to the borders of 1991 will lead to only one thing. Towards a global war with Western countries using the entire strategic arsenal of our state. In Kyiv, Berlin, London, Washington.” What does he mean by the 1991 borders? In 1991, Ukraine, as a newly independent state, inherited the old borders that the Ukrainian SSR had shared with Russia. This was the internationally recognized border up until 2022 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In short, Medvedev is saying that if Russia loses the war in Ukraine and is forced to return to respecting this 1991 border, Putin will hold the Western nations that have come to Ukraine’s aid personally responsible. And there are three front runners for providing the most aid so far in the war: the United States, Germany, and the UK. If Medvedev’s statement is true and Russia’s intent in defeat would be to launch their “entire strategic arsenal,” that would peg the UK as one of their top 4 targets. Included within that strategic arsenal are almost 6,000 nuclear weapons. Would Putin be desperate or bitter enough to launch them? Would the UK stand any chance in a war against Russia? And how likely is all of this to happen in the next ten years? Let’s dive into it. To start things off, why are tensions so high between the UK and Russia in particular? The UK government is often one of the first to speak out against Russia. The UK led the sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and was the first to impose new sanctions following the death of Alexei Navalny. To give you a full history of UK-Russian relations, we would need to go all the way back to the 1500s. That’s a topic for another video. Instead, we will start at the end of the Cold War. Decades of tension between the West and the Soviets were thawed with the arrival of Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II visited Russia, marking the first time in history that a British monarch had set foot on Russian soil. But this all took a turn with the election of Vladimir Putin in 2000. Putin’s introduction into the presidency was marked by a tighter hold on the freedom of Russian citizens and an increasingly assertive foreign policy. Putin’s government demanded that several high-profile defectors who had found asylum in the UK be extradited back to Russia. Businessman Boris Berezovsky and the Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev were both thorns in Putin’s side and represented a threat to his leadership and vision of a controlled and united Russia. The UK refused under the grounds that the two were political asylum seekers with a right to protection. This initial tension was totally overshadowed however by the events of 2006, with one of the highest-profile cases of secret service conflict in history. An assassination attempt on foreign soil that went so drastically wrong that the spy involved is still a household name in the UK to this day nearly twenty years later. Alexander Litvinenko. The photograph of Litvinenko in his hospital bed is perhaps the most significant image in British journalism from the 21st century. Hairless and pale, with arms crossed over his stomach, a turquoise gown draped over his shoulders, and a cold, unreadable expression on his dying face, the mystery and darkness of Litvinenko’s life are captured perfectly in that unsettling photograph. Alexander Litvinenko has served as an FSB officer, Russia’s secret service that replaced the KGB, throughout the 1990s. While there, he was shocked at what he saw. Under the Soviet regime, the KGB had been working to protect the values of communism from external threats. It was seen as a necessary evil to serve the greater good. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Litvinenko saw that communism had been replaced by a mentality more akin to that of a criminal gang. He was the first person to describe Vladimir Putin’s government as being like the ‘mafia.’ Power, personal gain, and security were all top of the agenda. Anything, or rather anyone, that threatened any one of those things for Putin or his inner circle were targets. Soon enough, this applied to Litvinenko himself. He defected from the FSB and came to London. Litvinenko had worked as a detective in the FSB. He was one of the best. Fiercely observant, he always noticed the little details. After a quick encounter, he would have collected a long list of features, traits, and weaknesses of those around him and read the subtext underpinning situations. These skills of observation are likely what saved him from the initial attempt on his life. Sitting outside the Millenium Hotel by Grosvenor’s Square, Litvinenko met with two FSB agents. They were just around the corner from the US embassy and the supposed base of operations for the CIA. There was a statue of Ronald Reagan with an inscription from Mikhail Gorbachev at the base. “With President Reagan, we traveled the world from confrontation to cooperation.” Pretty ironic then that the FSB officers were in the process of slipping Polonium 210 into Litvinenko’s cup of tea at that very moment. Polonium 210 is a highly radioactive and extremely rare isotope. It is undetectable in food or drink, so dangerous that you only need a tiny amount of it to guarantee that your target will die. Developed thousands of miles away, it had made its way around the world to this very spot, leaving radioactive traces at every stop on its way through London. Litvinenko did not see the poison go into his drink. Yet he still did not drink it. The man was a patron of exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky and a former FSB agent. If there was one person in the world who knew not to trust a drink from a fellow Russian, it was him. Litvinenko had a target on his back, and he knew it. He hadn’t been laying low since coming to the UK 6 years earlier. He had been one of Putin’s most cutting and outspoken critics, working initially as a writer and journalist. In 2003, he’d been approached by British MI6 agents, whom he had agreed to join. He didn’t touch the radioactive cup. But the agents tried again. At the Pine Bar, they sat together under the guise of defecting to help Scotland Yard. Litvinenko’s suspicions remained. A pot of tea was on the table with a few used mugs dotted around, but the other men had moved on to stiffer drinks by the time he arrived. When the men asked him whether he’d like to order a drink, he declined. They didn’t seem particularly phased by his refusal and continued the meeting. The other men couldn’t stay long. There was a football game they were going to see. They made an offhand comment that there was still some tea in the pot if he’d like it. They even called the waiter over to give Litvinenko a clean mug. Eventually, Litvinenko relented. He peered into the teapot. It was almost empty. The others must have been drinking it already. There were dregs in their mugs. He was quite thirsty… Litvinenko poured himself a mug and sipped it. It was green tea. He didn’t particularly like green tea. And even worse it was cold. He had a couple more sips so as not to let it go to waste, but he gave up pretty quickly. But getting up to leave the bar, Litvinenko could already tell something was wrong. Those men had come here to kill him. He knew that for sure. Had he misjudged them? Had they failed? Forensic experts later combed over the bar in great detail. They tested everything from the furniture right down to the cutlery. Painting a picture of what had happened was so easy they wouldn’t have needed CCTV. The teapot that Litvinenko had poured his drink from registered over 100,000 becquerels per centimeter squared. Just 10% of that level of radiation was enough to kill a person. The table alone where they sat was 20,000 becquerels. Worst of all, nobody knew what had just taken place. The staff at the bar put the teapot in the dishwasher with everything else multiple times and served countless guests at that table before the police got to the scene. Weeks later. By this point, the entire bar was a radioactive disaster. Tracing the damage caused by this kind of radiation is incredibly difficult. How do you track down random people who went to a bar they may not even remember the name of? How do those people connect the sudden onset of cancerous cells in their bodies to a cup of tea they drank in London one afternoon? Even Litvinenko did not know what had happened at first. Seventeen days passed before he was hospitalized. The doctors couldn’t make sense of what was happening to him. His body was behaving like a man being subjected to constant chemotherapy. The kind of symptoms he was expressing don’t just happen to someone. They can only point to one thing. Poisoning. Police investigators arrived on the scene and sat with Litvinenko, interviewing him eighteen times in total. As he lay in his hospital bed, he knew that his death was already a certainty. In a way, he was a kind of ghost. And so there was nothing else for him to do but solve his murder. On the 23rd of November 2006, he died. Litvinenko’s interview files were released to the public in 2015. The details of the case paint a shocking picture of Russia’s actions. The Polonium 210 is not just a smoking gun but a breadcrumb trail. British intelligence agencies were able to trace every movement and decision of the men involved in Litvinenko’s assassination, right down to which toilet cubicle they used, which sink they used afterward, and where they poured out the rest of the poison. What was most damning and stirred up anger in the British population and government was the total lack of regard for the lives of innocent civilians. Deadly levels of radiation were found in public spaces all across London. Polonium 210 traces were found in over 60 sites in the UK. Even more worrying were the trace amounts found on aircraft responsible for 221 flights, most between the UK and Moscow. 33,000 passengers were contacted about this. Could it be that this was not the only time Russia had sent agents armed with Polonium 210 into the UK? The only reason it was discovered in Litvinenko’s case was because the tea had gone cold. This marked a turning point in Anglo-Russian relations. The early 2010s saw an improvement in relations with Putin visiting the London 2012 Olympics and hosting a visit for British Prime Minister David Cameron. At the time, the hope was that Cameron could act as a political ‘go-between’ for Russia and the US to ease ongoing tensions, but it was not to last. In 2014, Putin ordered the invasion and annexation of Crimea. Cameron did not hesitate to condemn the actions. In his words, the Russia election into the annexation of Crimea did not count as the people had "voted under the barrel of a Kalashnikov", stating, "Russia has sought to annex Crimea... This is a flagrant breach of international law and something we will not recognize." What followed was years of sanctions and repercussions for Russia, championed and pushed by the UK in particular. The UK cut all military ties with the country, stopped trading weapons with them, and imposed economic sanctions. In retaliation, Russia cut off all food exports to the UK. Years of back and forth under different Prime Ministers as well as Brexit and COVID all saw one thing remain consistent. The UK’s stance was staunchly anti-Putin. Then, history repeated itself in March 2018. In Salisbury, Russian-British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were targets of a botched assassination attempt. This time it was Novichok. Novichok is a kind of nerve agent that attacks the central nervous system, leading to respiratory problems and cardiac arrest. It was developed with four goals in mind. To be undetectable using standard NATO chemical detection equipment. To penetrate NATO chemical protective gear. To be safe to handle. To circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list. This was a nerve agent designed to attack NATO countries specifically, but also use loopholes to stop it from breaching international laws around chemical weapons. Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury by a passing nurse. Witnesses saw Yulia’s eyes open but unresponsive as she foamed at the mouth. They were rushed to A&E, where they were put under intensive care. After several weeks spent unconscious, they eventually awoke. Once they were well enough, they were taken to an undisclosed location to be protected, treated, and interviewed. The UK was once again outraged at Russia and imposed even more sanctions, but the dust didn’t have time to settle before there was another apparent assassination. Just a few months later, in July, there was another double poisoning of two British citizens using Novichok again. What was most curious was that it was just 7 miles North of Salisbury in Amesbury. Charlie Rowley had found a pretty perfume bottle in a trash can. Rowley, deciding it was too good to go to waste, gave it to Dawn Sturgess, who happily sprayed it onto her wrist. Within 15 minutes, she was dead. Rowley fell ill too, having come into less close contact with the perfume, but survived. Investigators quickly connected the dots. The perfume was the nerve agent used in the assassination attempt of the Skripals. Whoever the Russian agent was had disposed of the bottle in a trash can to hide the evidence. Scientists examining the bottle concluded there was enough Novichok in there to kill thousands of people. The police officer who inspected the Skripal’s house in a full forensic suit was hospitalized from exposure to the poison and was left with undisclosed life-altering medical conditions. In a speech that year, Chief of the General Staff Mark Carleton-Smith underlined the severity of Anglo-Russian relations. In his words, British troops must be ready to "fight and win" against Russia's "imminent" threat. "The misplaced perception that there is no imminent or existential threat to the UK – and that even if there was, it could only arise at long notice – is wrong." And then, in 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. The UK, at the time of writing, is the third biggest supplier of aid to Ukraine after the US and Germany, since the start of the war at $15 billion. The list is extensive: hundreds of armored vehicles and tanks, artillery, air defense systems, ambulances, ammunition, drones, and so much more. Most notable are the over 5,000 NLAW missiles that infantry units can fire to take out enemy tanks which have proved highly effective during the war effort. While the Ukrainian military is much smaller than the Russians, they are kitted out with the latest technology, which has given them a real edge. The UK was also swift to impose sanctions. They banned Russian Aeroflot flights from entering their airspace, locked Russia out of the SWIFT banking system, and froze the assets of several wealthy Russians in London who had ties to Putin. London had played host to Russian oligarchs for over a decade as a kind of safe haven. The city had benefited financially from welcoming them. Most notable was the Chelsea football club, one of the biggest in the world, which was owned by Roman Abramovich. For 19 years, he had owned Chelsea, seeing them win multiple Premier League titles and transforming them into a world-class team through his financial investment. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the UK government forced him to sell the club. He was deemed to have ‘clear connections’ to Vladimir Putin. Yachts were seized, and bank accounts were frozen. The strategy was to hit Putin’s inner circle where it hurt: their wallets. For decades, Putin’s friends had enjoyed massive financial prosperity. The UK was able to put a significant dent in that. It did little to persuade Putin to end the war. If anything, it has made him more vindictive. Since this point, the UK has had a direct and honest tone when talking about Russia that is rarely seen in British politics. The UK government has openly accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine and most recently asserted that the death of Alexei Navalny -Putin’s political adversary who died mysteriously in a Russian prison in 2024- was directly caused by Vladimir Putin. The gloves are off, and the British government has shown they are in no mood to mince their words anymore. So, let’s get back to the question at the top of the video. How likely is it that Russia will go to war with Britain? Well, in March 2022, Russian television broadcast a hypothetical segment hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov, the head of the Russian state media group. The segment was titled The Sinkable Island. It was a simulation of a nuclear attack on Great Britain. This was not a fringe television show. It was a prime-time threat. The outlook in the UK is grim but determined. With turbulence in UK politics as an election year looms and the balance of power looks to change hands from a Conservative government to Labour, one thing is clear. The anti-Putin policies will remain. The UK is set to continue upping its sanctions as imports of Russian diamonds, copper, and aluminum are banned. There is a growing sense of tension as the UK sends 50 of its Challenger tanks to join the war games across Europe. Major Simon Robertson, the second in command of 17 Port and Maritime Regiment, Royal Logistic Corp, said grimly as the tanks were transported away that Britain needed to be "ready for anything." In January, a UK nuclear submarine did a test launch of a Trident II D5 missile. While this one was unarmed, the missile is capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads that can be deployed from the missile in the air. Or at least, that’s the theory. The missile was supposed to fly 3,700 miles but quickly went off course and landed in the ocean just off the US coast. Worryingly for the Royal Navy, this marked the second of that type of missile that had failed in a row. If the Cold War had shown anything, it was the importance of having a strong nuclear deterrent, and the public failure of two missile tests reflects poorly on the country’s readiness for the worst-case scenario. This joins a growing unease in the UK about its readiness for war. The UK economy over the last decade has been flat. The country did not bounce back from COVID as well as many of their European neighbors, suffered a financial hit from leaving the EU, and saw higher than average inflation rates that triggered a cost of living crisis. Investment into the military has taken a backseat in recent years in an attempt to steady the domestic ship. One example is the UK’s fleet of tanks. 213 tanks in total, it pales in comparison to the 1,750 sitting in Russia’s inventory. A new upgrade to the Challenger 3 variants is in progress, but only 148 of the UK’s tanks will see the upgrade. It’s costing £800m but critics within the UK government argue that it is not enough. British soldiers have been spending time training in Finland, Poland, and Estonia over the last year. Each country would be a potential target for Russian invasion, and each is a member of NATO. Should Putin choose to expand his borders even further than just Ukraine, one of these countries would be a likely target. However, if he were to invade them, he would be met with the might of all 31 NATO countries. Many unknown entities are hiding in the fog of the next ten years. The Ukraine conflict's outcome will likely be decisive in setting the course. Should Russia successfully take over the whole country, perhaps they will set their sights on another target. Perhaps NATO will be forced to step in to protect Ukraine from total collapse. If Russia loses, Medvedev has made it abundantly clear that it could spell all-out war against NATO, with the UK ranking near the top of the list. And yet, the UK is not shying away from these threats. War games, missile tests, cold weather training, reinforcing allies across Europe, the message is clear. If Russia wants a war with NATO, the UK intends to be standing there ready on the frontlines. Now check out “Analyzing Russia's Massive Failures in War Against Ukraine.” Or watch this video instead!