Russia prepared for WW3 with a nationwide test of its warning sirens on Wednesday.
The late morning alert across the country's 11 time zones ordered Russians not to panic, but to immediately turn on TVs or radios for emergency instructions.
'The warning system is designed to promptly transmit a signal to the public in the event of a threat or emergency of natural or man-made origin,' said the country's emergencies' ministry.
'On hearing a siren, you must remain calm and not panic.
'Turn on the television -- any public channel or radio -- and listen to the informational announcement.'
In Yekaterinburg, a TV channel dropped normal programming to show a notice declaring: 'Attention everyone! The public alert system is being tested. Please remain calm.'
The latest test of the system from the Baltic to the Pacific came amid increasingly bellicose warnings from Kremlin media and propaganda outlets.
They said that a full-scale global conflict is inevitable amid the US-Israeli military action against Putin ally Iran, and Russia's own relentless war in Ukraine.
The dictator's mouthpieces trained their sights on the chief of the British general staff General Sir Roly Walker, who recently warned: 'We are on a collision course with a Russia that is on a war footing.'
Putin's state TV questioned whether Britain was in a 'position of strength' to tackle the Russian military machine.
The dictator's leading television mouthpiece and propagandist Vladimir Solovyov asked: 'We just need to understand the size of the British army. How many do they have now?'
Military expert Andrei Klintsevich told him: '75,000, including those with fur hats [bearskins] and so on.'
Solovyov declared: 'That's two months of our work, and it will be completely destroyed, using conventional methods.'
He mocked Sir Keir Starmer's plan to send British troops to Ukraine to police a peace deal, saying: 'This army will be worn down in two months.'
'Even strikes with conventional weapons and a large number of coffins going to Britain will raise the question: what are you idiots doing?'
Amid defence cuts in Britain, he questioned the logistics to put UK troops in place.
'There are no logistics to deliver them there, nor anywhere to place them....They will be immediately destroyed by precision strikes.'
By comparison, Russia has around 1.5 million military service personnel - despite horrific losses in Ukraine.
Last Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, and Russia continues to send tens of thousands to their slaughter on the frontline despite suffering more than 1.25 million casualties so far.
In a piece for the Daily Mail, Sir Roly said he could see no evidence of the Kremlin scaling back its ambitions.
But in a call to arms, Sir Roly said he believed that, when the time comes, Britain would emerge victorious and the future 'will be on our terms, and our terms alone'.
Sir Roly wrote: 'We, and the West generally, are in the crosshairs of Russia. It's us on their terms or no deal. This is not going away, however the war in Ukraine ends.'
'Unless something changes, I think we are on a collision course with a Russia that is on a war footing, that is replenishing its lost equipment and rearming itself to be a bigger and more lethal set of armed forces.'
Sir Roly added that, according to the Ukrainians, Russia will only take Britain seriously when it sees our armaments factories producing at wartime rates.
For that reason, he called for the rebuilding of the UK's national arsenal.
The decorated former SAS officer also vowed to take on and defeat Russia should it attempt to invade Nato territory.
He said: 'Russia started this war by invading Ukraine. It seems to me only they can decide to stop it. We need to continue helping Ukraine. We can also signal to Putin that if he thinks it will be any easier to steal Nato territory then he is even more stupid than we thought. We will never give up what matters to us.'