Russia could be planning to build fake wooden versions of London and Washington in the Arctic before blowing them up with nuclear missiles as a warning to the West, a Russian propagandist has claimed.
The crackpot plan, which would see both city centres constructed from plywood, would act as a warning to the UK and US to stop arming Ukraine with long-range missiles and other armaments.
According to Russian propagandist Alexei Mikhailov, migrants would build the replica cities on the Russian archipelago of Novaya Zemlya which was previously been used by the Soviet Union for atomic testing.
The Head of the Bureau of Political-Military Analysis claimed on Kremlin-controlled Russian state TV that Britain, among other nations in the West, wants to “directly participate” in the Ukraine war.
Russia set to ‘build fake London out of plywood then nuke it’ in warning to WestReuters/Getty Images“The Anglo-Saxons want a big continental war - they really do,” Mikhailov said.
“[We know about the] absolutely disgusting intentions of Britain to….directly participate in the military conflict with Russia by supplying, among other things, long-range precision weapons.”
Explaining more about the plan, Mikhailov said Russia would “build a replica of London on Novaya Zemlya [nuclear-testing island in the Arctic]…. And Washington, the centre….the White House, this central part. And we're going to do an exercise.”
He added that the nuclear test would involve a Bulava missile launched from a submarine in the Atlantic.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:The test would eviscerate the fake plywood cities with “more than 150 kilotons of TNT equivalent”, Mikhailov said.
“On YouTube let three billion users see what it looks like to destroy the capital of Britain and the United States, with just one warhead out of 10 that are part of each Bulava.
“There will be Buckingham Palace and Big Ben. It will all go up in blue flames and fly so beautifully that the world will be horrified.”
However, aiming to balance Mikhailov’s comments, another TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov suggested Putin had no time to build the plywood mega-cities.
Western analysts have questioned whether Putin's rocket boasts any strategic valueREUTERSThe comments come after Vladimir Putin unveiled a new “invincible” missile with an “almost unlimited range”.
The 71-year-old Russian premier claims the weapon - named Burevestnik, but dubbed SSC-X-9 Skyfall by Nato - can evade American missile defences.
However, analysts in the West have disputed Putin's claims and questioned whether the rocket boasts any strategic value.
The "Skyfall" has a poor test record, with just two partial successes out of at least 13 known tests since 2016, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
In 2019, a recovery of one of the missiles went wrong when the weapon exploded, leaving an unshielded nuclear reactor "smouldering" on the floor of the White Sea, in the Arctic, for an entire year.
Its record has attracted jibes from analysts abroad - Thomas Countryman from the Arms Control Association called it "a uniquely stupid weapon system" and "a flying Chernobyl that poses more threat to Russia than it does to other countries".
