Russia will be “vindictive” if it loses the Ukraine war and poses a direct threat to the UK, the outgoing head of the RAF has warned.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), has told The Telegraph that Russia’s air force, surface navy and submarine force are a threat to Britain and Nato and that this is something “we must focus our minds on”.
He warned that the threat will endure or even get worse if Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is ousted.
The RAF has provided intelligence and material support to Ukraine since the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February last year.
Addressing the conflict, Sir Mike said: “When the Ukraine conflict is over and Ukraine has restored its borders, as it must, we will have a damaged, vindictive, and brutal Russia, whose means of harming us is through air attack, missile attack and subsurface attack.”
After four years at the top of the RAF, Sir Mike is set to step down next month.
He has led the air force during a period in which the force has been engulfed in a diversity scandal, after the head of the recruiting and selection branch resigned over claims she was under pressure to pause the hiring of white men to meet targets.
In his final interview as Air Chief Marshal, Sir Mike acknowledged for the first time that improving diversity was put into personal targets.
He also addressed the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in the military, saying humans must always make decisions on lethal force.
His comments on the threat of Russia after the end of the war in Ukraine are the first public acknowledgement by a Western military leader of concerns understood to have been discussed in private over how a humiliated Russia might act if defeated in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, US General Christopher Cavoli, the head of his country’s European Command, said despite major losses to the army as a result of the war in Ukraine, the Russian armed forces were still largely intact and remained a significant threat.
“It's very easy to look and to think that the Russian military has collapsed or is in dire trouble, but in fact, it's been uneven,” said Gen Cavoli during a security conference in Tallinn, Estonia.
“The ground forces are greatly eroded. They have run into big problems [but] the navy has lost almost nothing, cyber has lost nothing, space lost nothing.
“How long will it take to rebuild? The question is, how long will it take to rebuild to do what? They’re capable of doing things today.”