Article published in The Daily Mail, 3 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Russia is wounded, far more badly than the Kremlin ever believed possible. Ukraine’s extraordinary special forces mission deep inside enemy territory has done vast damage to Putin’s war machine.

There will be retaliation. The Russian president, afraid more than anything of appearing weak, cannot be seen to let such a devastating attack go unanswered.

Since he first ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has frequently warned he is willing to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield – often issuing these threats through lackeys in Russia’s state-controlled media.

Now he might well calculate that, by unleashing such a device, he can demonstrate his invincibility and force Ukraine’s surrender. The appalling reality is that such a calculation might be right.

Europe does not have an effective nuclear deterrent. Britain, once the predominant nuclear power of the continent, has shamefully dismantled its own arsenal. We used to have tactical nuclear weapons, with immense blast power but limited radiation yields, which could be dropped from Vulcan bombers.

We also possessed short-range Lance tactical ballistic missiles capable of being armed with atomic warheads. But no longer. Our only nuclear option now is the Doomsday weapon, a strategic missile of cataclysmic power, designed solely for self-defence, to deter an enemy from waging all-out war on Britain.

To use one of these against Russia as punishment for anything they do in Ukraine would be a suicidal escalation. A global holocaust would ensue. And Putin knows we will never provoke that.

The French do have tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by cruise missiles launched from the air. But these also are intended for last-ditch self-defence.

America has repeatedly warned that it will not tolerate the use of tactical nukes by Russia. So have the Chinese. But with President Trump vacillating on his country’s commitment to protecting Europe, Putin could well decide it’s a risk worth taking.

Certainly the US and Europe would protest strongly if a nuclear weapon exploded in Ukraine. But Putin has often shown that he cares nothing for international opinion. To use such indiscriminate force will be an unmistakable statement that he is prepared to stop at nothing.

In Beijing, while the official reaction would be one of horror, in private the Communist party leaders would find it all very instructive. No country has used a nuclear bomb in war since 1945. They would treat it as a useful demonstration of what a non-conventional weapon does.

It could be used in one of four ways. The most likely is to target a Ukrainian battle concentration of tanks, artillery and troops on the front line. Ukraine keeps its forces as widely dispersed as feasible but, even in an area of low population, the psychological effect of such an attack would be enormous.

Also probable is an attack on a Ukrainian airfield, in a direct act of vengeance for the destruction of dozens of Russian bombers on Sunday. It is likely that this could kill Nato specialists, including British troops, who are rumoured to be helping Ukraine in a covert capacity.

More horrific still are the consequences of a nuclear attack on an atomic power station. While radiation from the tactical weapon itself would not present a threat to Western Europe, the fallout from a ruptured reactor would do incalculable environmental harm. The consequences could dwarf the Chernobyl disaster.

The last possibility is almost unthinkable: a nuclear bomb dropped on a Ukrainian city such as Odessa or Kiev. The death toll would reach hundreds of thousands. And even then, Putin might believe that Nato would not respond in kind. He could be insane enough to think that this would win the war for him at a stroke.

I strongly expect that, in that scenario, the US would respond with a surgical nuclear attack on Russia. Britain would stand with America, and at that point we would be drawn into open war with Russia. In that case, we must be prepared for debilitating sabotage against our infrastructure, because Putin has many agents hidden in the UK, waiting for the command to wreak havoc.

This is the price we pay for having no adequate nuclear deterrent. Since the end of the Cold War, we have allowed our defences to erode until our enemies have little to fear from us.

Very belatedly, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that our military must reach ‘war-fighting readiness’. You may well ask what the point is of armed forces that cannot immediately achieve that readiness. Yet the government says our spending on defence will not reach even 3 per cent of GDP until 2034.

This is unacceptable. The lives and freedom of everyone in the UK are at stake. Britain must re-arm with all possible urgency. We are as defenceless against the threat of tactical nuclear weapons as Ukraine itself is.