One of Vladimir Putin’s cronies has threatened the UK with nuclear armageddon and listed seven key targets that would be hit first in the event of World War 3.

Yevgeny Popov is a TV propagandist and host of the programme 60 Minutes on the channel Russia-1.

The Kremlin stooge launched a furious tirade against US plans to deploy its missiles to Germany.

The UK was firmly in his sights as he warned Keir Starmer that it would take just three Russian missiles to “collapse British society”.

“Special attention to Britain, our traditional enemy, as a significant part of the [Russian] Northern Fleet will work against [the UK],” he said.

“Under attack, Washington has put not only London but also Manchester, Birmingham, the largest naval base Devonport, the Clyde in Scotland, where the King stores his Trident nuclear missiles, Portsmouth as well as Chatham Dockyard in the county of Kent [at risk].

“This is Britain at its most vulnerable. Basically, all it would take is three missiles and this civilisation would collapse.”

The US has agreed with Germany to station non-nuclear Tomahawk cruise, SM-6 and hypersonic missiles in Germany from 2026.

The decision was welcomed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz who said it “fitted exactly” into his government’s security strategy.

However, Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, issued a stark warning to Berlin, insisting Moscow would respond militarily to the decision.

He said that NATO was now “fully involved in the conflict” and called the move “just another link in the chain of a course of escalation”.

A video simulation of a nuclear war between NATO and Russia made by researchers at Princeton University in 2019 estimates that some 34 million people would be killed, with another 91.5 million casualties.

Towards the start of the video, titled Plan A, Russia sends 3000 nuclear warcraft to NATO bases across Europe.

The simulation then shows London and surrounding areas targeted, with the whole European continent being hit in just three hours, with an estimated 2.6 million killed or injured.

London is depicted as being carpet-bombed, and Europe is devastated, at which point NATO launches a further 600 warheads from US soil and via nuclear submarines aimed at Russian nuclear forces, with Russia responding with a salvo of its own.

There are a further 3.4 million casualties in just 45 minutes. Both sides then launched further strikes on major population centres, with another 85.3 million people killed and wounded in just 45 minutes.