Ben Wallace claims Vladimir Putin has gone 'full Tonto' – claims UK can 'kick Russia's backside'

The UK Defence Secretary has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of going "full tonto" as he moves Russian forces into Ukraine.

In a series of off-camera coments, Ben Wallace is heard comparing Putin to Tsar Nicholas I during the Crimean War.

Mr Wallace spoke of his old regiment, the Scots Guards, saying they had "kicked the backside" of the tsar in the Crimean War, and they "can always do it again".

The unguarded comments came as the Cabinet minister chatted with serving military personnel at the Horse Guards building in Westminster.

He said: “It’s going to be a busy Army.

“Unfortunately we’ve got a busy adversary now in Putin, who has gone full tonto".

Mr Wallace said the UK has 1,000 personnel on stand-by to respond to the crisis, adding: “The Scots Guards kicked the backside of Tsar Nicholas I in 1853 in Crimea – we can always do it again".

He continued: “Tsar Nicholas I made the same mistake Putin did… he had no friends, no alliances".

The Defence Secretary’s comments came in a room dominated by a large painting depicting the Battle of Inkerman, a major engagement during the Crimean War.

Mr Wallace’s assessment of Mr Putin’s mental state came after Boris Johnson accused the Russian leader of being “in an illogical and irrational frame of mind”.

Mr Wallace told reporters he was keeping the possibility of sending further weapons to Ukraine “under constant review”, adding: “We’re in a pretty good position to deliver any type of aid pretty quickly to Ukraine, no matter what that aid is".

He suggested that Russian forces invading Ukraine could be followed by a mobile crematorium to help disguise the number of casualties inflicted during the potential war.

“Fundamentally, when you have over 60% of your combat forces poised on the borders of another state, the overwhelming scale of the Russian intimidation and forces – including some pretty horrendous weapons systems – are pretty worrying.

“And we also expect to see some of the things they’ve done previously. Previously, they’ve deployed mobile crematoriums to follow troops around the battlefield, which in anyone’s book is chilling.

“If I was a soldier, and knew that my generals had so little faith in me that they followed me around the battlefield in a mobile crematorium, or I was the mother or a father of a son, potentially deployed into a combat zone, and my government thought that the way to cover up loss was a mobile crematorium – I’d be deeply, deeply worried".