It was a photo opportunity designed to send the message to Vladimir Putin that Britain is serious about protecting Ukraine from aggression on its Eastern border.

But the sight of Liz Truss astride a Challenger 2 tank in Tapa, Estonia, on Tuesday recalled the West’s resistance against another Russian leader: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Thirty-five years before, the Foreign Secretary’s political hero Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, was pictured in a similar pose, riding in an earlier iteration of the same tank at a Nato training ground near Fallingbostel, West Germany.

Wearing a mac, scarf and goggles, Mrs Thatcher used a laser-guided weapons system to fire a 6lb practice shell from the tank. She later declared she “loved it”. The next day’s edition of The Daily Telegraph described her outfit as a “cross between Isadora Duncan and Lawrence of Arabia”.

On Tuesday, with a coat and body armour to ward off temperatures of -6C (21.2F), Ms Truss - dubbed “the minister for Instagram” - posed in her own tank beneath a Union flag and the colours of the Royal Tank Regiment.

Read more here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/11/30/liz-truss-ukraine-russia-tank-war-invasion/

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