Starmer secretly prepares for Russian attack after threats by Kremlin

The UK is updating its plans on how the nation would respond to a direct attack amid an increased level of threat from Russia. Officials have been asked to update plans for the first time in 20 years, which would see the UK put on a war footing if attacked by a peer enemy such as the Kremlin.

The plans include evacuating members of the Royal Family, public service broadcasts and stockpiling of food. Moscow has repeatedly threatened the UK with attack over its support for Ukraine and has ramped up cyber attacks against Britain since its invasion. Ministers are understood to have concerns over how the UK would respond to military strikes with conventional and nuclear missiles as well as to critical national infrastructure such as underwater cables, gas terminals and transport hubs.

According to the Telegraph, the classified “homeland defence plan” would lay out the measures to be taken in the days following a direct attack.

The plan was last updated in 2005, at a time when Russia lacked the capability to strike the UK mainland with conventional weapons and when cyber warfare was less prevalent.

The plan by the Cabinet Office’s Resilience Directorate will lay out how the Prime Minister would run a wartime government and will detail how things such as the courts, road and rail networks, postal system and phone lines would operate.

It comes as senior officials have warned that the UK lacks the ability to properly defend the mainland from conventional attack, with some calling for an Iron Dome system, similar to that used in Israel, to be created.

In recent years, both China and Russia have developed hypersonic missiles that can travel up to 10 times the speed of sound, which can better evade traditional missile defence systems.

Last month, a senior RAF official revealed that had the UK been subjected to the attack directed towards Ukraine on the first night of the invasion in 2022, key infrastructure would have been severely damaged.

Under the plans, the UK would be divided into 12 regions, each of which would be governed by a cabinet minister, senior military officers and chief constables with special powers.

Food and building supplies would be stockpiled and the BBC would be instructed to make public broadcast announcements on how to shelter from missiles.

The plans are based on the War Book, a secret Cold War dossier of instructions on how the country should respond to a nuclear attack, which were recently released by the National Archives.

The War Book detailed how the Prime Minister would be moved to a bunker in the Cotswolds while Queen Elizabeth II would have been evacuated via the Royal Yacht.

Keir Starmer has pledged to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in this parliament and 3% within the next parliament.

The MOD is currently in the final stages of conducting a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) which will assess the state of the armed forces and identify significant capability gaps.