World War III has already begun, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon told the Mail’s ‘Apocalypse Now?’ podcast.

In conversation with special correspondent David Patrikarakos, Mr Bannon credited with spearheading the president’s shock 2016 election victory, described how the Russia-Ukraine conflict is ‘metastasising’ to engulf parts of the Middle East and Asia.

Mr Bannon said: ‘There is an arc of instability, all the way from Belarus and Ukraine to the Balkans and the Middle East.

‘If you add to that Kashmir, these are the flashpoints for a third world war, which we’re already in. The kinetic part of this has already started.

‘This is already much bloodier than 1939-1941, which people think of as the first few years of World War 2. Over a million and a half people lay dead or wounded in Ukraine, which looks like Dresden in 1945. Gaza looks even worse.

‘We are two minutes to midnight here – from a far greater global conflagration.’

How to Stop World War III

Mr Bannon warned that unless US president Donald Trump can cool tensions with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, then the entire globe risks sinking into a ‘brutal’ war which inevitably will involve the use of ‘chemical, biological and nuclear weapons’.

The host of the Bannon’s War Room podcast made his chilling prediction when asked why Mr Trump has adopted a less hawkish stance towards the Russian president than his predecessor Joe Biden.

‘I think what Trump is trying to do’, Mr Bannon explained.

‘He’s trying to reach a reproachment with a part of the Judeo-Christian West, which is Russia – so we can lay down our arms and calm this thing down.

‘If he isn’t successful: China, the KGB mafia in Moscow, working with the mullahs in Persia and Tehran – people better understand that as barbaric as the Second World War was, the Third World War will be of such a level of brutality, with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, that people can’t even comprehend it.’

Bannon however, clarified that despite fears of global war, the US must continue to be tough with China.