A top UK general compared the invasion of Ukraine with Hitler's aggression before World War II

• A top Uk general compared Russia's war in Ukraine to Hitler's aggression before World War 2.
• "This is our 1937 moment," Chief of the General Staff Gen. Patrick Sanders said on Tuesday.

A top UK general compared Russia's invasion of Ukraine with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's aggression before World War II, saying forces should be mobilized to prevent the ongoing war from spreading deeper into Europe.

"Now, as then, our choices will have a disproportionate effect on the future," Chief of the General Staff Gen. Patrick Sanders said during a Tuesday speech at a conference in London. "This is our 1937 moment. We are not at war, but we must act rapidly so we aren't drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion."

Sanders said he believes the world is living through a period of history as "profound" as the one leading up to World War II — before the Nazi war machine waged total war and occupied much of Europe — and said that the British army will "not mobilizing to provoke war; it is mobilizing to prevent war."

"For us, the visceral nature of a European land war isn't just some manifestation of distant storm clouds on the horizon — we can see it now," he said.

Sanders added that "in all my years in uniform, I haven't known such a clear threat to the principle of sovereignty and democracy, and the freedom to live without fear of violence," as Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin's "expansionist ambitions."

His remarks come as select world leaders head to Madrid for an upcoming NATO summit. The military alliance announced Tuesday it would bolster its rapid-response unit from 40,000 to 300,000 troops.

Meanwhile, Russia has continued to make slow gains in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, where the war has become a landscape of shifting fronts, artillery exchanges, and counterattacks.