Sir Keir Starmer has ordered a review of Britain’s war plans in response to growing fears of a potential direct military attack by Russia.
Officials in the Cabinet Office are understood to be updating the ‘homeland defence plan’ spelling out how the government would respond to a strike by a hostile foreign state.
The move comes following a series of threats against the UK from the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin’s propagandists over its support for Ukraine.
The updated blueprint will include scenarios in which Britain’ critical national infrastructure is targeted by missiles, cyber attacks and even nuclear warheads.
It will also set out contingency plans for sheltering government ministers and the royal family as well as maintaining key public services during wartime, according to The Telegraph.
The Cabinet Office has already analysed the range of threats facing the UK and their potential impact.
A risk assessment published in January found a successful attack was ‘likely to result in civilian fatalities as well as members of the emergency services’, while also causing serious economic damage and disruption to essential services.
Last month, officials ran a scenario simulating the first night of Russia’s bombardment against Ukraine to test the UK’s air defences.
Air Commodore Blythe Crawford, former head of the RAF Air and Space Warfare Centre, said the outcome was ‘not a pretty picture’.
The wargame tested the UK’s response to ‘hundreds of different types of munitions’ attacking from several directions.
It exposed vulnerabilities including a shortage of airfields and lack of hardened shelters leaving bases and fighter jets unprotected.
Defence officials have called for Britain to develop its own version of Isreal’s vaunted Iron Dome system to repel missile attacks.
Speaking in October, MI5 boss Ken McCallum said the UK’s role in supporting Ukraine ‘means we loom large in the fevered imagination of Putin’s regime and we should expect to see continued acts of aggression here at home’.
In the last year,he said the number of state threat investigations – inquiries into plots by hostile states – had surged by 48%.
Outlining the broad range of threats faced by the security service, he said the agency is facing terrorist threats ‘alongside state-backed sabotage and assassination plots, against the backdrop of a major European land war’.
A government spokesman said: ‘The UK has robust plans in place for a range of potential emergencies that have been developed and tested over many years.’
Russia has reported a drone attack by Ukraine for the second night in a row.
All four of Moscow’s major airports closed for several hours during the overnight bombardment, which mayor Sergei Sobyanin said came ‘from different directions’.
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