Russia's 'Professor Doomsday' sends terrifying WW3 threat 'to destroy UK with nuke'

Russia shoulduse a nuclear explosion to intimidate Britain's political leadership into kowtowing to Vladimir Putin's demands, said his advisor Sergei Karaganov, known as Professor Doomsday.

He warned that a new world war is coming, which can only be stopped if the West clearly understands that the Kremlin will use atomic weapons. And he claimed a key Putin aim is to replace the current "elites" in Western countries, including Britain, with leaders who do not resist the Moscow dictator.

The influential political analyst warned: "Russia should assume a firm commitment, in the event of a war with an opponent who surpasses it demographically and economically, to use nuclear weapons.

"So, I hope, we will be able to sober some people up. [But] I am not sure we will sober everyone...."

He sees Britain and France as the countries defying Putin over Ukraine and marshalling the free world into challenging Moscow.

He demanded: "First, we still need to conduct exercises of our strategic and sub-strategic forces that would demonstrate to our British and, God forbid, French neighbours that we can deliver a disarming strike."

This appears to mean a nuclear test strike, perhaps in the Arctic, intended as a direct warning to the UK and France.

"If one warhead nevertheless flies out, then those two countries will be destroyed in their entirety," he said.

"Then, I hope, the question of Britain and France will not arise.

"And those people, who babble about things they do not understand, will shut up...."

The professor - honorary chairman of the Russian Council for Foreign and dean of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at Moscow's Higher School of Economics - denied he had prepared his own bunker but said: "I have put aside some quantity of grains, oil and other foodstuffs simply in the cellar."

"Our larger aim is to replace the elites [in Britain and other Western countries] with more reasonable ones," he said.

"If, of course, there remain in Europe people who are still reasonable, who think of national interests, who feel their countries, who feel their history, who adhere to normal human relations and values.

"And if not, then the enemy must be destroyed...."

A Third World War was looming, he said.

"Now a pit is forming, a large war is rolling in, which must be prevented to save our country, our people, and incidentally, to save even some European peoples, deceived and duped like the Ukrainians, from a terrible fate."

The readiness to use nuclear weapons, and even their use, would halt such a conflict, he claimed.

"This is our task, this is, I would say, our duty before God," he said.

"It is our duty to the generations who fought for our Motherland, for our freedom and for the freedom of Europe and the world.

"If we do not do this, then we may lose and incur disgrace."