Vladimir Putin has once again taunted the UK by saying it’s a ‘secret’ whether he will target British drone sites.

The president was asked yesterday evening at a press conference in Kyrgyzstan how Russia will respond to the UK’s giving weapons to Ukraine.

Smirking, he told the Russian state media broadcaster RT: ‘It’s a secret. A military secret.’

‘British military facilities’ inside Ukraine, he added, are ‘absolutely’ a Russian target.

When the journalist replied that this was a hypothetical question, Putin said: ‘If there are, then absolutely, I can confirm once again: any military facilities in Ukraine are our legitimate target, British or otherwise,’ he said.

The UK Ministry of Defence revealed earlier this year that it runs four military repair facilities in Ukraine, with a fifth on the way.

These sites, called maintenance, repair and overhaul systems (MRO), do not manufacture weapons, just fix damaged military hardware.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham vowed last month to keep backing Ukraine amid its grinding, years-long war with Russia.

He agreed to hand over blueprints for the British-made parts of the SCALP missile, a French version of the UK’s powerful Storm Shadow missile.

The blueprints will allow Ukraine to produce the weapon, which has a range of about 155 miles, domestically.

Kyiv has had to repeatedly ask Western nations to send long-range missiles, as while it has the technology needed to fire them – an ageing fleet of Soviet-designed fighter jets – it doesn’t know how to make them.

Moscow has repeatedly cast the UK as a meddling agitator in its war against Kyiv for providing the country with weapons and financial aid.

Just one day after Burnham backed Ukraine, Kremlin adviser Andrei Fyodorov said that ‘unknown sources’ may soon strike British drone factories.

He told the BBC that Moscow officials are facing ‘serious’ pressure ‘to undertake certain measures against the UK’.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also threatened to attack British military targets in Ukraine and ‘beyond’ in relation.

Spokesman Maria Zakharova accused London of being ‘one step away’ from ‘inevitable catastrophic consequences’, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Russia named four locations in the UK as targets in April for supporting Ukraine in the production of attack drones.

The locations included locations in London, Reading, Leicester and a road running through the RAF base used by the United States Air Force in Mildenhall, Suffolk

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