Britain must prepare for the sudden collapse of Vladimir Putin‘s regime, government officials are warning, amid fears the ‘mortally wounded’ despot could carry out a ‘Stalin-style’ purge to cling on to power.
Western officials warned that Putin’s grip on Russia is crumbling as questions mounted over his whereabouts following the attempted coup by the Wagner mercenary forces, led by his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin.
A senior source in the UK Government told The Times that Britain ‘must prepare for a whole range of scenarios’ and that ‘this could be Chapter One of something new’.
Meanwhile, Alicia Kearns, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, warned that Putin may launch a purge to survive, as his propagandists furiously question why the march towards Moscow was allowed to progress as far as it did.
The senior Tory MP also suggested Russian intelligence may have hidden the coup from Putin, as it emerged that both Britain and the US had intelligence that Prigozhin was…