RUSSIA staged a nationwide drill testing emergency service readiness for nuclear strikes today.

Sirens wailed across the 11 time zones of the world’s biggest country while TV stations interrupted programmes to broadcast a notice saying “Attention everyone! The readiness of the public warning system is being tested! Please remain calm!”

Russian authorities said the “exercise storyline” simulates a response to a situation in which 70 per cent of housing and all vital infrastructure has been destroyed, wide areas are contaminated by nuclear fallout and a general mobilisation has been announced.

Moscow says Western military support for Ukraine, which Russia invaded last year, risks turning the war into a direct clash between nuclear powers. Its Security Council chief Dmitry Medvedev said at the weekend that “imbeciles” in Nato were “actively pushing us to World War III.”

A Moscow court today handed former TV presenter Marina Ovsyannikova an eight-and-a-half-year jail sentence in absentia for protesting against the war. She is currently in France.

Ms Ovsyannikova fled Russia after attending a protest in which she held up a placard calling President Vladimir Putin a “killer.”

She had previously made world headlines for holding up a sign saying “stop the war, don’t believe the propaganda, they are lying to you” on national TV.