Russia could attack a NATO country within four years according to western intelligence assessments, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned on Friday.<\/p>\n
He made the comments as he pledged his government would publish a long-delayed defence investment plan before next month\u2019s NATO summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is our intelligence assessment and the assessment of other countries in NATO that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030,\u201d Starmer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you can see the urgency and the priority that we\u2019re putting behind this now,\u201d he added during a visit to a drone manufacturer in southwest England.<\/p>\n
It echoes similar timeframes expressed by other European leaders and NATO chief Mark Rutte who warned in December that Russia \u201ccould be ready to use military force against NATO within five years\u201d.<\/p>\n
Starmer has pledged to raise defence spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product from next year, increasing to three percent in the next parliament.<\/p>\n
A 10-year defence investment plan following a review of the UK\u2019s defence capabilities was meant to be published late last year but has not yet been produced.<\/p>\n
Starmer announced it would be published before the\u00a0NATO\u00a0summit in Turkey, beginning on July 7.<\/p>\n
UK media has reported that the plan has been delayed due to disagreement between the finance ministry and other departments over the cost.<\/p>\n
Starmer insisted to reporters it would be \u201cfully funded\u201d.<\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, Britain\u2019s military chief warned that Britain must boost its defences in response to threats posed by Russia, which invaded Ukraine more than four years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my 35-year career, this is the most dangerous period that I have known,\u201d Air Chief Marshal Richard\u00a0Knighton told the BBC.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd as a consequence, it is important that we enhance the capability and the readiness of our armed forces alongside our allies to deter our adversaries from doing something daft.\u201d<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly urged NATO countries to spend more on defence and become less reliant on Washington for security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia could attack a NATO country within four years according to western intelligence assessments, UK Prime Minister Keir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[676],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}