NATO

Gen Walker, a former Irish Guards officer, said the full-scale attack on Ukraine was designed to fracture Nato and destroy the transatlantic alliances that protected Britain since World War Two. He told the RUSI think tank in London: “This about the Euro Atlantic security architecture. That’s the object of their manoeuvre and it is just starting in Ukraine, so it must fail in Ukraine. Otherwise where does it go next.”

Russia's military has now sustained an estimated 550,000 casualties since its invasion of Ukraine, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the UK chief of the defense staff said. "Our assessments are that it will take Putin five years to reconstitute the Russian army to where it was in February 2022," he told the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) land warfare conference. He added it will take another five years "rectify the weaknesses that the war has revealed”, and get Moscow's army back to its February 2022 strength.

General Sir Roly Walker, who became chief of the general staff in June, was one of those addressing the army’s annual land-warfare conference, run by the Royal United Services Institute (rusi), a think-tank. In his speech he set out his aim “to double our fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade”.