UK defence secretary urges boost to military spending

General Sir Patrick Sanders, chief of the general staff, denounced the “brutal aggression” of Russian president Vladimir Putin in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think-tank. “Let me be clear, the British army is not mobilising to provoke war — it is mobilising to prevent war,” said Sanders, adding: “This is our 1937 moment. We are not at war — but must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion.”