Putin’s nuclear threat to the UK: Russia could demolish nine places in just 20 minutes.

In the midst of rising tensions with the West, VLADIMIR PUTIN’s fearsome arsenal of nuclear weapons could annihilate nine UK military bases in 20 minutes, according to an expert.

Russia has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons with a 6257-strong fleet. These include 527 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers. ICBMs can get up to a top speed of four miles per second in about ten minutes after launch, meaning the horrifying weapons could potentially reach the UK from Russia within 20 minutes.

As tensions with the West rise, Russia just launched two military ballistic missiles in tests ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

“All the missiles struck their targets, confirming their performance objectives,” the Kremlin claimed.

Christopher Witman, an Army veteran and nuclear war scholar, previously stated that if Russia attacked the UK, it would target six Royal Air Force (RAF) stations.

Flyingdales in Yorkshire, Alconbury in Huntingdon, and Lakenheath and Mildenhall in Suffolk are among them.

Other RAF bases that could be targeted in the event of a nuclear attack include Croughton in Northamptonshire and Barford St John in Oxfordshire.

Three Royal Navy bases — HNMB Clyde in Scotland, HNMB Devonport in Plymouth, and HNMB Portsmouth – might all be targets.

One ICMB was shot northwest of Russia in the Kremlin’s newest missile testing, which Mr Putin watched on-screen with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

Another was launched from a submarine in the Barents Sea, hitting targets thousands of kilometers away in Kamchatka’s extreme eastern peninsula.

“Such test launches, of course, are impossible without the head of state,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said. You’ve heard of the fabled black suitcase with the red button.”

It comes as tensions between Russia and the West have risen over Russia’s menacing troop build-up on Ukraine’s borders, which has now reportedly reached 190,000.

But these tensions nearly reached boiling point, when Mr Putin chose to recognise two regions of Ukraine as independent and sent troops into two rebel-held regions of eastern Ukraine.

Now, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has now announced a series of harsh sanctions.

Five banks have had their assets frozen, and three Russian billionaires are set to be hit with UK travel bans.

Mr Johnson said in the House of Commons: “The House should be in no doubt that the deployment of these forces in sovereign Ukrainian territory amounts to a renewed invasion of that country.

“And by denying Ukraine’s legitimacy as a state and presenting its very existence as a mortal threat to Russia, Putin is establishing the pretext for a full-scale invasion.”

US President Joe Biden held a similar line to Mr Johnson, also perceiving Russia’s movement into Ukraine as the “beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine”.

The United States has also taken steps to authorize further economic sanctions and appears to be preparing to send troops to the Baltics.

The troops were ordered in for “peacekeeping operations,” according to Mr Putin.

However, satellite pictures collected by Maxar Technologies on February 13 and 22 indicated a powerful fleet of military technology and resources spanning Belarus, Crimea, and western Russia, all of which border Ukraine.