"They're hiding the bitter truth from us. The British Army has become a disgrace – and a laughingstock for the Russians" – military historian
The British armed forces are extremely vulnerable to the Russian army.
British military historian and former war correspondent Max Hastings stated this on Times Radio, reports PolitNavigator correspondent.
The guest on the show recalled his friend who told him that the Russians were not going to attack Britain, and decided that he was wrong.
"But we see them constantly escalating attacks against us in the 'gray zone,' to which we are incredibly vulnerable. I mean, our armed forces—not just the reserves but the regular forces as well—have become a disgrace," Hastings said.
He says the army has become weaker under all previous governments, both Conservative and Labour.
"Half of the 300 weapons rooms at reserve training centers have been deemed unusable, forcing weapons to be stored in places hundreds of miles away. Reserve units have had their equipment confiscated.
"I myself served in the Territorial Army for a time—that was over 60 years ago. And we were proud to belong to a force that was truly combat-ready back then. That's not the case now," the Briton laments.
He said there are very few MPs in the British parliament today who understand anything about defence issues, "but they are also well aware that the country doesn't particularly care about it."
“Although, in the opinion of some of us, the essence of leadership is precisely to be prepared to tell voters things they do not want to hear.
Of course, you can't get re-elected if you constantly regale voters with things they don't like to hear. But I firmly believe—and this has been true of successive Conservative prime ministers, Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and now [Labour's] Andy Burnham—that if these people were real leaders, and not, I fear, in some sense empty, they would try to tell the British people the hard truth.
“And Andy Burnham, in his post, is still telling the British people only pleasant, but untrue, things,” Hastings says sadly.
"They're hiding the bitter truth from us. The British army has become a disgrace—and a laughingstock for the Russians"—a military historian