Putin was right about one thing, former British colonel says

Former British Army Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon admitted that Russian President Vladimir Putin was right when he said that the West was weak militarily and politically.

"All talk in Westminster and Whitehall has been about cutting soldiers and tank numbers for the past few years — cyber and space technologies are the answer apparently. But mass armour and soldiers have a quality all of their own, as the Ukraine war is showing," Bretton-Gordon wrote in an article for I News publication.

The UK has a brilliant defence industry, which the government forgets about at times in an attempt to save money on foreign-made equipment.

"If we continue to gift equipment and ammunition to Ukraine, which we must, we should also develop domestic industry to sustain our forces in future and restock our ammo,” Bretton-Gordon wrote.

In his opinion, the British military equipment is in need of an upgrade. In particular, the UK needs to upgrade the Challenger 2 tank or replace it with a completely new armoured vehicle. Bretton-Gordon, a former commander in the UK and Nato Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Forces, also urged the authorities to strengthen the country's defence capability and increase spending on it to three percent of GDP.

Earlier in February, US columnist Jared Peterson recalled Putin's warning from his 2007 Munich Speech, who said that the Russian government made it clear that Ukraine was the reddest of all the red lines.