Azernews.Az

Britain is at war with Russia already, one of the authors of the government’s strategic defence review has warned, while arguing that we can no longer depend on the US as a reliable ally, Azernews reports.

Dr Fiona Hill, who served as the White House’s chief Russia adviser during Donald Trump’s first term in office, said the UK is in “pretty big trouble”, warning that the country is stuck between “the rock” of Russia and the “hard place” of an increasingly unreliable US under Mr Trump.

It comes after the government’s strategic defence review - unveiled last week - found that the armed forces are not ready to fight opponents like Russia or China.

“Russia has hardened as an adversary in ways that we probably hadn’t fully anticipated,” Dr Hill told the Guardian, concluding that “Russia is at war with us”.

Arguing that the Kremlin has been “menacing the UK in various different ways” for years, she pointed to “the poisonings, assassinations, sabotage operations, all kinds of cyber-attacks and influence operations. The sensors that we see that they’re putting down around critical pipelines, efforts to butcher undersea cables.”

Unveiling the SDR last week - authored by Dr Hill, Lord Robertson and General Sir Richard Barrons - defence secretary John Healey said Britain’s army needed to become “10 times more lethal” in the face of the “immediate and pressing threat" from Russia and the rise of China.

“We are in a new era of threat, which demands a new era for UK defence,” he told MPs.