Truss was bracing for 'Putin to launch nuclear weapons'

Vladimir Putin was so close to using nuclear weapons in October 2022 that Liz Truss spent the dying days of her premiership preparing for the potential fallout, an updated version of her biography has claimed.

- ARCHIE MITCHELL

The former prime minister reportedly spent her last days in office studying weather maps and preparing for cases of radiation poisoning in the UK amid US intelligence a strike was imminent.

Ms Truss had been told the Russian president was just hours from deploying a nuke, which Whitehall officials feared would hurl radioactive material into the atmosphere which could spread 1,700 miles from the blast, according to Out of the Blue, an unauthorised biography of the short-serving former PM.