UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on Sunday rejected the Russian ambassador’s accusation that the UK is breaking the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and said the UK needs to increase its nuclear deterrence to protect itself and its NATO allies. The UK government on March 16 said in a policy review that it plans to stock up to 260 nuclear warheads, reversing a previous administration’s announcement in 2010 to lower the cap from 225 to 180 by the mid-2020s. Andrei Kelin, Russia’s ambassador to Britain, accused the UK of violating the NPT. “If [the] UK is going to continue to raise [the] number of nuclear warheads, and this was a big surprise for the whole world,” Kelin told LBC radio on Sunday. “You are increasing [the] number of warheads by 40 percent. This is a violation of the treaty of non-proliferation and many, many other agreements that are saying only a …