The Foreign Secretary Liz Truss used to be famous for her “it’s a disgrace!” conference speech about imports of EU cheese. Now her place in history may have been assured as the first Western leader to declare World War Three.

She didn’t exactly call for regime change in Moscow, but her speech to the Mansion House last week contained the sobering assessment that driving Russia out Ukraine could take five years – longer than the Second World War. “The war in Ukraine is our war,” she said, unafraid of using the “W” word, “and we are in for the long haul.”

It was the most militant speech from a British foreign secretary since the Cold War. And she also had China very much in her sights, too, demanding a Nato build-up in the Indo-Pacific.

I’m not sure Britain is quite up to speed on this. Ms Truss set out Britain’s war aims in Ukraine, really for the first time, as being nothing short of the removal of Russian forces from all the occupied territories in Ukraine.

This includes the Crimean Peninsula, which has been in Russian hands for nearly eight years and is considered, in the Kremlin at least, as an integral part of Russia. We’ve been here before.

Britain fought Russia over Crimea in the 1850s. We were on the side the Muslim caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, back then. It was complicated.

The British public never really understood the Crimean War although they followed it avidly in the press, not least when journalists reported the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders’ stand – the Thin Red Line – against the Russian cavalry at Balaclava, the battle which gave us the woolly hat. After the siege of Sevastopol, we sort of won. The Russian navy was effectively banned from the Black Sea.

Now, there is no prospect of the Royal Regiment of Scotland being packed off to storm Sevastopol. Ms Truss has made very clear, as has Boris Johnson, that British boots will not be on the ground in the Ukraine war.

But just about everything else will be. We have ransacked our arsenal of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, and been sending as many of our armoured cars as the Ukrainians can handle. It’s only the start

In Liz we Truss?

MS Truss anounced a “step change” in the war effort. “We must reboot, recast and remodel our approach,” she said, promising “heavy weapons, tanks, aeroplanes – digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production”. We are already organising the transport with the US of heavy armour, tanks, artillery.

Negotiations are starting about supplying Kyiv with jets from Nato countries like Poland which will be “back-filled” by British replacements. Britain is sending 8,000 more troops to frontline states in Eastern Europe as part of Operation Hedgehog to stiffen Nato’s “hard power”. British weapons are being used in strikes on Russian soil apparently with the support of the UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey. This is all to help Ukraine win the battle of the Donbas – win it, not just hold the line.

As readers of this column may be aware, I have supported British military involvement in Ukraine since the day the Russians invaded. Nato may have erred in the past by overhasty expansion, but the illegal and unprovoked war of aggression by Vladimir Putin has changed all that.

I believe Britain can be reasonably proud of having galvanised Nato countries in Europe – especially Germany which had sold its soul for Russian gas – into supporting the Ukrainian war effort.

Readers may also be aware that I have lamented Westminster and Holyrood’s failure to prepare the British public for what they are now engaged in: which is a full-scale proxy war with Russia. Obsessed with partygate and other bubble trivia, the British media has also failed to track what has been happening.

Only this week did BBC interviewers start asking, somewhat bemusedly, questions about escalation and likely retaliation. Er, what exactly have we got ourselves into, they wondered?

For there has indeed been a step change. We are no longer trying to stop Putin and force him to the negotiating table – have decided that Russian forces should be “comprehensively defeated”. Win or bust.

UK targeted

BORIS Johnson made this clear on April 19 in the Commons in a statement which was ignored because of partygate. And it has not gone unnoticed by Putin that the UK has opted to be the lead country in Nato’s war, as he sees it, against Russia.

It’s hard to miss when Ukrainians are naming streets after Boris Johnson and singing God Save The Queen when they launch NLAW anti-tank missiles at Russian tanks with remarkable success, according to Nato reports.

“The British leadership”, the Kremlin said, “is deliberately aggravating the situation around Ukraine”. Putin has warned of “lightning strikes” against those “interfering” and waging “economic war” on Russia.

Putin demonstrated Russia’s new Satan 2 Sarmat missile last week, a weapon which can deliver a nuclear payload on the UK within 200 seconds, supposedly too fast for radar.

As one of Putin’s sock puppets, Vladimir Solovyov, put it on state TV, “one Sarmat means minus one Great Britain”.

Nuclear threat?

NOW, I do not believe that a nuclear attack is imminent or likely, but some form of retaliation probably is. We have seen chemical weapons used by Russian operatives at least twice on British soil.

There are almost certainly Russian operatives at work in Britain, very possibly posing as Ukrainian refugees. Our immigration control is so useless they’ve probably come in on passports in the name of “Volodymyr Zelenskyy”.

Putin has claimed, outrageously, that he is conducting a “special operation” to root out Nazis in Ukraine. You only need to look at reports in the Russian media to realise that his view of Russian victimhood is widely shared. This is because he has spent years conditioning public opinion through the media channels that the Kremlin effectively controls.

Fascism front

RUSSIAN viewers really believe that they are fighting a war against fascism. This is a highly emotional matter in a country that lost 20 million people in the last war against the Nazis.

We don’t have a state-controlled media – one of the great strengths of the West. But this only works when the press gets its priorities right. Future historians will be astonished that, at the very moment the UK became involved in a new war against Russia, the conflict was sidelined day after day because of a row over fixed penalty notices at Number 10. It has been an almost wilful defiance of the mission to explain.

Boris Johnson has been allowed exceptional latitude in his escalation of this new war. The Prime Minister has made many of the right calls. But we must always remember remember the fatal attraction that war holds for political leaders, especially those who have been losing public support.

Winston Churchill has always been Boris Johnson’s idol and he is very probably seeing this new and dangerous situation through a Churchillian lens. Churchill was a great war leader, but also prone to adventurism and delusion.

That is why we need democratic scrutiny more than ever at times of war. Right now, we are not getting it.