Everyone in UK 'must step up' to deter Russian threat of wider war, armed forces chief to warn

The whole of the UK - not just its armed forces - needs to step up to deter the threat posed by Russia of a wider war in Europe, Britain's military chief will say.

In the kind of nation-wide call to action that has not been heard since the height of the Cold War, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will use a speech in London on Monday evening to urge the British public to make defence and resilience "a higher priority". He will say Russia's war in Ukraine shows that Vladimir Putin's willingness to target his neighbours "threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK.

The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO". Yet there was nothing in excerpts of the speech - released in advance by the Ministry of Defence - that pointed to any push by Sir Keir Starmer's government to increase defence spending faster than planned, despite the flashing warning signs and concerns among senior military officers that the budget is currently set to grow too slowly.

In a further articulation of the threat, Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, will use a separate speech on Monday to warn that the "front line is everywhere" in a new "age of uncertainty". "The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement," she will say, in her first public comments since becoming the first female chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in October.

"We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus." Read more:Head of MI6: 'Never seen the world in a more dangerous state'NATO chief calls for 400% increase in air and missile defence Defence and security chiefs across the NATO alliance are increasingly sounding the alarm about the potential for Russia's war in Ukraine to ignite a much wider conflict. Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, last week said Europe must ready itself for a confrontation with Russia on the kind of scale "our grandparents and great-grandparents endured" - a reference to the First and Second World Wars.

At the same time, Al Carns, the UK's armed forces minister, said Britain is "rapidly developing" plans to ready the entire country for the possible outbreak of war. Sky News revealed last year that the UK had no national plan for the defence of the country or the mobilisation of its people.

By contrast, a detailed blueprint for the transition from a state of peace to one of war existed throughout the Cold War, setting out not just what the armed forces, emergency services and local governments had to do in the event of conflict, but also wider society, including people working in industry, schools and public transport. However, this Government War Book was quietly shelved after the Soviet Union collapsed and successive governments took a so-called "peace dividend.