Are you in Vladimir Putin’s firing range? (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
From Hull, to Barrow-in-Furness and Edinburgh – these are just some of the targets Putin has in mind for the launch of nuclear weapons.
29 leaked papers seen by the Financial Times reveal up to 32 targets across Nato countries.
Maps of these targets were detailed in a presentation for officers that predates the full-scale invasion of Ukraine between 2008 and 2014.
It shows Putin has been planning something for a while and that Russian warships are primed to start nuclear war.
The documents reveal that the UK would likely be nuked by ships from Russia’s Northern Fleet, headquartered in Murmansk.
Meanwhile the Kremlin’s Baltic Fleet based at Kaliningrad would target France and Germany.
The documents also show targets in countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Japan.
Bizarrely military scenarios with Russian allies like China, Iran, Azerbaijan and North Korea are even all included.
The secret files are worrying for Nato countries and the wider world (Picture: AFP via Getty Images)
Out of all the areas in the documents in the UK – Barrow-in-Furness is Putin’s number one target area.
But also an unnamed target in Hull is on the documents as well as the shipyard at Rosyth in Scotland.
This is where the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales were built.
But before all this happened, the papers suggest Putin would launch a ‘demonstration strike’ in a remote, unpoplated area to scare western countries.
What’s even more alarming is that Western officials believe the Russian president was planning an attack like this during the early days of the war in Ukraine.
Putin has been planning things for quite a while now (Picture: AFP or licensors)
He even ordered a major rehearsal in May over anger at Britain’s support for Ukraine.
To add to it all, these documents are just a fraction of the real number of targets Russia has according to experts.
William Alberque, a former Nato official now at the Stimson Center, said the sample was a small portion of ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of targets mapped across Europe . . . including military and critical infrastructure targets’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
