Vladimir Putin’s attack dogs have trained their guns on HMS Prince of Wales – the UK’s flagship aircraft carrier.

Defence secretary John Healey said this week the vessel was now at “full capability” as it was placed under NATO command.
The Navy flew 36 F-35 sorties in one day off the carrier – anchored off Naples – which he said was the highest rate since the Falklands war in 1982.

But in a concerted blast from the Kremlin’s propaganda machine, three of Putin’s hitmen launched state media onslaughts against HMS Prince of Wales and the British armed forces, claiming they will be redundant in a coming “thermonuclear world war”.

Another Dr Yury Baranchik, a geopolitics and security expert, called for Putin to use hypersonic missiles to sink the flagship.
‘Assassin’ Andrey Lugovoy – wanted in Britain to face trial for the radioactive poisoning in London of Putin for Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 – branded the warship a “leaky tub” and “rickety”, claiming the Royal Navy was scared to put it in harm’s way.
The hardline MP and propagandist said: “Healey talks about how we are Britain, ruler of the seas “But [they] are not the ruler of the seas….

“Six months ago, this aircraft carrier became famous for the fact that it was supposed to come to the shores of China, demonstrating British aircraft carrier capabilities.

“It was supposed to leave in March this year. It didn’t. Why? Because the Houthis, as it happened, broke the truce and everyone who was supposed to move past the Red Sea was bombed there….
“So the aircraft carrier never left.”

Russian TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov said: “So it’s a timid aircraft carrier. There are Houthis, Houthis, I’m not going….”
Lugovoy replied: “It’s timid. Do you know what else they call it? Rickety….
“They say that the shame of Britain and the Prince of Wales are synonymous.”

Political scientist Yakov Kedmi said the aircraft carrier “cannot operate on its own.
“It needs an aircraft carrier group. Without an aircraft carrier group of destroyers, cruisers and submarines, it is a target. It is impossible without this.”

Yet Britain lacked the resources – “this is the problem with the British fleet “They do not have the ships to create an aircraft carrier group together with this Prince of Wales [aircraft carrier]. And so now they are scrounging all over Europe [trying to] assemble an aircraft carrier group to make it formal. I don’t know how effective it will be or how they will operate [with]
Portuguese destroyers….Italian submarines nearby.”

He said of the British: “They can puff themselves up as much as they like, they can blow themselves up, they can threaten anyone they like, but they don’t have an army. This year, their army will reach a record low of less than 70,000 people.
“They cannot assemble a single tank division…. They cannot assemble an aircraft carrier group. This is Great Britain.”
He mocked: “What are they saying in Europe….? ‘We need 800,000 Ukrainian soldiers against Russia…the goal is to fight against Russia’. Now they are making plans to move their army from the west to the Russian border in five or four days.

“And there is a list of how many tanks there will be and what tunnels there will be. Don’t they understand at all that the future war will not be fought [in this way]? Do they think that the Russian navy and Russian air force will wait until the ships leave the United States and bring these tanks to Europe….?

“The next war, if it involves the United States, and without the United States it makes no sense, will not last more than an hour. It will be a thermonuclear war. And whoever survives will be the winner. And no one will be interested in any tanks, any bridges, anything. No one will fight with tanks.”

“Why should they? The next war….will be based on what every war has been based on, and now especially, on firepower.”
Lugovoy said of the Prince of Wales that in 2020, the year after it launched, it “suffered its first flood.
“It hadn’t even gone through its combat trials yet. It was repaired, but six months later there was another flood because the fire extinguishing pipe broke. After that, it was repaired again.

“When it went on its first combat trials in 2022, it didn’t even leave the English Channel, spending two months bobbing around, and then it was sent to the Scottish docks, where it was repaired for nine months.”

Earlier, Dr Baranchik called for Russia to launch a strike on the 932-ft long HMS Prince of Wales. This should be done in revenge for Britain supplying Storm Shadow missiles for Ukraine to use in Russia, he said. “On 21 October there was another strike with Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missiles.

“Our technical capabilities are vast. For example, on 22 October we could have scrambled two or three MiG-31K/Is and struck the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales with Kinzhal [Dagger] missiles.”

Britain was too weak to offer a strong response, he claimed. “It is unlikely Britain would have started a nuclear war with us.”