Warning issued over Brits conscripted within six years | UK News

Brits must be prepared to go to with Russia in the next six years, an expert has warned.

Professor Anthony Glees, a security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, said there is a ‘snowball’s chance in hell’ of Russia leaving Ukraine.

He agrees with calls for conscription and the idea of UK citizens being called upon to fight made by outgoing head of the British Army General Sir Patrick Sanders.

He told The Mirror the military should recruit volunteers in the next three years in preparation.

He said: ‘The UK government should plan to sign up volunteers now and over the next three years and the whole of the nation should prepare for conscription within six years unless Putin were defeated.’

He compared 2024 to 1937 two years before World War II when conscription seemed like a distant notion, a comparison also made by General Sir Patrick.

Professor Glees continued: ‘I would see a limited conscription, a call-up of incentivised volunteers, as being very much on the cards if Putin is now thrown out of Ukraine.

‘Obviously, if there were a wider European or world war conscription would follow at once.

‘Putin has repeatedly said he wants the post-1997 Nato states to be disarmed and brought back into the Russian orbit, recreating the system of satellites that was the strategic policy of the USSR. There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of Putin just going away.’

Professor Glees’s view comes after a former Nato commander warned the UK might introduce a Finnish-style conscript army where men as old as 60 are told to fight in the event of war.

General Sir Richard Shirreff said the UK needs to ‘think carefully’ about conscripting hundreds of thousands of Brits to fight against Russia.

So far the UK, Estonia and Sweden have warned about the prospect of large-scale war.

But a government spokesperson confirmed: ‘The government has no intention to follow through with that.

‘The British military has a proud tradition of being a voluntary force. There are no plans to change that.’

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