Fears Vladimir Putin could detonate a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea in show of force

Putin and his generals are growing increasingly desperate amid seismic battlefield losses in Ukraine and “significant failures of military leadership”.

Fears are growing that Vladimir Putin will launch a nuclear show of force by detonating a deadly warhead over the Black Sea.

UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace dashed to Washington, DC, for crisis talks yesterday amid mounting concern that Putin’s finger is inching toward the trigger.

A security source told The Sun: “The threat has increased recently.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Photo by Gavriil GRIGOROV / SPUTNIK / AFP)

Mr Wallace cancelled giving evidence to MPs at short notice to head to the US capital to talk to his American counterparts.

UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey admitted yesterday “we are at a time when these sorts of conversations are necessary”.

The scare comes as the Russian tyrant continued to be humiliated with his troops being pummelled by Ukrainian forces.

Western officials warn Putin and his generals are growing increasingly desperate amid seismic battlefield losses in Ukraine and “significant failures of military leadership”.

Putin said last month that Moscow was ready to use nuclear weapons to defend its “territorial integrity”.

And US President Joe Biden has warned that the world is closer to Armageddon than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Yesterday, a British RAF spy plane came within miles of the Crimean coastline as it flew over the Black Sea, accompanied by two Typhoon fighter jets.

Putin is said to be considering a nuclear show off force. The mushroom cloud from a US nuclear test in 1954 is pictured

The RC-135W ‘soaks up’ enemy signals and is also known as a ‘nuke sniffer’ because of its capability to test the atmosphere for evidence of radioactivity.

In a fresh bout of sabre-rattling yesterday, Putin’s spokesman warned that newly annexed parts of Ukraine could be defended by nuclear weapons.

Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “All these territories are inalienable parts of the Russian Federation and they are all protected. Their security is provided for at the same level as the rest of Russia’s territory.”

The heightened fears come as Putin’s forces continue to be driven back in the east of Ukraine.

One source said Putin was running low on “high-precision, long-range, significantly sized warheads” like the S-300 missile.

A Western official added: “Although Russian stocks are large they are by no means infinite.

“When you look at the number of missiles fired over the last few months, we are thinking here that this is an issue.

“Russia’s ability to continue with this saturating barrage of precision weapons is getting to a point now where this will be unsustainable.”

As a result, Putin is deploying Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.

But they are not as reliable, are less effective and fly relatively slowly overhead, making them easier to bring down by anti-aircraft fire and small arms.

Iran has denied supplying the drones to Putin but a source said there is “no doubt where these weapons are coming from”.

Meanwhile, the UK has called Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian towns and cities “cowardly and desperate acts”.

The latest strikes left Zhytomyr, a city with military bases 85 miles west of the capital Kyiv, without electricity and water after a missile strike on an energy facility.

Missiles also hit an energy facility in Kyiv and severely damaged another in Dnipro.

This story was originally published by The Sun and was reproduced with permission