Britain issued nuclear wake-up call amid fears Vladimir Putin will send Russia to war with UK

The Dutch ex-PM added: "Too many believe that time is on our side. It is not... The time for action is now.

"Conflict is at our door. Russia has brought war back to Europe. And we must be prepared."

And last night, former British Army spokesman Major Mike Shearer and ex-Tory MP Bob Seely joined GB News to discuss the rising threat of Russia.

Maj Shearer opened with a scathing assessment of Britain, Europe and the US: the former two are "in disarray", and the third may no longer be reliable.

"Europe is in disarray. I think we have to accept the 'Pax Americana', the notion that we could rely on our American cousins [to guarantee peace]... We have to assume that's no longer there," he said.

He then pointed to Lord Robertson's warning to the House of Lords that the UK is "uninsured" against a future war and lacks the "wherewithal to defend our islands".

Mr Seely, a former British Army officer, then added: "Russia considers itself to be in conflict with the West.

"We reduce the likelihood of actual war breaking out if we deter - and we are not deterring enough."

Then, Maj Shearer weighed in with a grim assessment of the Russian premier's plans.

"Putin is being quite responsible here. Putin is sending us all the signals. He is building an armoury," he said.

"And what what Putin is trying to do is put a conventional military wedge between the West and nuclear war. We need to recognise this.

"We need to put an equal conventional military wedge between us and Putin - then, there will be a standoff.

In the case of a standoff, he said, Mr Putin - and potentially Donald Trump - might have to leave office for peace to be secured.

"The best we can hope for is that there is a cold war, and we sit it out until there is new leadership at the strategic level, at the very top of Russia and likely the West, and it will dissipate.

"But we need to give Putin that conventional warfare option."

Mr Seely agreed, warning: "We shouldn't have been hiding behind America, full stop. Europe is a rich continent. We should have been paying our own way.

"Ever since Putin decided on this new Cold War and this path of conflict, which he decided back in a speech he made in 2007, we should have carefully rebuilt not only in our conventional capacity, but how we deal with more hybrid threats."

He added: "Our political classes and indeed our leadership in this country and indeed Europe, did not want to accept what was happening when Putin attacked Georgia and when he attacked Ukraine in 2014."

The former Isle of Wight MP said Mr Putin was on the way to becoming one of the world leaders in drone warfare - while Britain is "years behind".

"We have to catch up because we're not going to deter any political or military adventurism from Putin if we are seen to be weak," he said.

"We need to play catch up and we need to do it fast, because we are more likely to prevent the possibility of war if we deter properly."