WW3 fears as Army chief warns UK faces unavoidable war with Russia | UK | News

Britain’s top military commander has declared that conflict between Britain and Russia is inevitable whether Kiev wins or falls.

General Sir Roly Walker has issued a scathing assessment four years after Vladimir Putin’s forces crossed into Ukraine, warning that Moscow is amassing expanded and more powerful armed forces to escalate the war.

In an exclusive article he wrote for this newspaper, the Chief of Staff said he saw no signs that the Kremlin was planning to moderate its expansionist agenda.

But the Army’s senior officer struck a defiant tone, predicting Britain would triumph when the conflict came and pledging that the future would be “on our terms and only our terms”.

Uninterrupted troop deployment despite more than million casualties

Russia has sacrificed more than 1.25 million personnel since the start of its offensive, but Moscow continues to feed tens of thousands of new soldiers into killing zones along Ukraine’s defensive positions.

Last night, Minister of the Armed Forces Al Carns touched on pre-World War II parallels, suggesting that current conditions reflect “1937 or 1938” – the ominous final years before the explosion of Hitler’s aggression.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia “has already started the Third World War.”

England is within the scope of Moscow’s targeting

Sir Roly writes in the Daily Mail: “We, and the West generally, are in Russia’s crosshairs. We are on their terms or no deal. However the war in Ukraine ends, it will not go away.”

“Unless something changes, I think we are on a collision course with a Russia that is at war, replenishing equipment it has lost and rearming itself to become a larger and more lethal group of armed forces.”

According to intelligence received from Ukrainian sources, Sir Roly stated that Russia would ignore Britain’s deterrence until it witnessed Britain’s arms production operating at full wartime capacity.

He therefore called for the rebuilding of the UK’s national arsenal.

Senior special forces commander vows to defend NATO

The high-ranking former SAS officer was determined to suppress any Russian attempt to seize NATO member territory.

He said: “Russia started this war by invading Ukraine. It seems to me that only they can decide to stop it. We need to continue to help Ukraine. We can also signal to Putin that if he thinks it will be easier to steal NATO territory, he is stupider than we think. We will never give up on the things that are important to us.”

Sir Keir Starmer will announce Ukraine’s expanded support at the Coalition of Volunteers meeting today.

Simultaneously in Kiev, Foreign Minister Yvette Cooper plans to denounce what she calls the “despicable” cultural reprogramming of peoples living under Russian occupation.

Moscow’s Russification campaign is forcing residents to accept Russian citizenship documents, stop using the Ukrainian language, and cut off contact with family members still living in Ukrainian-controlled areas.

Staggering equipment and personnel bleeding

Armed Forces minister Al Carns listed Russia’s “unimaginable” battlefield costs: the destruction of 10,000 armored fighting vehicles and 4,000 main battle tanks, as well as a minimum of 1.25 million casualties.

Marking the fourth anniversary of the invasion, Mr Carns, who served five combat rotations as a Royal Marine in Afghanistan, said: “I never thought I would see North Korean troops fighting on the European border in my lifetime; this should serve as a wake-up call for us all.”

Western intelligence assessments released last night reportedly suggest that 2026 represents a potentially critical juncture; This marks the first period in which Russian military deaths exceeded the number of new recruits.

This demographic reversal carries profound implications, given Moscow’s infantry-centered warfare doctrine of mass infantry assaults across open terrain towards Ukrainian fortifications. However, after these human wave attacks, Russian commanders deploy mechanized assets during follow-up operations.

A contested front-line episode saw 16,000 Russian deaths compressed into just fourteen days.

Analysts also warn that Russia’s wholesale economic transformation towards military production, combined with the size of resources already invested, could make leaving increasingly challenging for the Kremlin, even if the political will is there.

During BBC interviews, Zelensky effectively identified Putin as triggering a third global conflict, elaborating on the issue this way: “Russia wants to impose a different way of life on the world and change the lives that people choose for themselves.”