As the recently departed Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne on her Coronation Day on June 2nd 1953, she spoke memorably of the living strength of the Commonwealth, as well as of “societies old and new; of lands and races different in history and origins but all, by God’s Will, united in spirit and aim.” Now King Charles III, her eldest son at 73 years of age, faces the history-defining challenge of keeping the Commonwealth as one when it seems that it will take considerably more than a divine decree to keep it united. In the week when it was…

Vladimir Putin has been warned that his rag tag army of exhausted conscripts and demoralised mercenaries are in no fit state for him to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine. General David H. Petraeus, a former top U.S. commander in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that although regular troops had historically been trained to operate on a nuclear battlefield, the Russian president’s current forces were not up to the task. General Petraeus added that the localised nuclear option – which many see as a last desperate throw of the dice by Putin – would also render the affected areas as impassable to Russian…

Dual national Britons based in Russia face being called up to fight in Ukraine, western officials have warned An estimated 4,000 British people currently living in Russia have also been warned to leave the country as soon as possible. The actual number of dual British-Russian passport holders in Russia is unknown but sources have suggested that the number could be in the high hundreds. The warning follows updated UK travel advice from western officials who said that British nationals holding Russian passports should be aware that they face the possibility of being called up as part of President Putin’s mobilisation…

MI5 has created a new “Minority Report” research centre designed to combat the “insider threat” posed by traitors working for Russia and China. The top-secret unit will be staffed by a team of forensic and clinical psychologists under orders to root out agents planted inside Britain’s intelligence services by hostile states. The psychologists will also play a role in recruiting and vetting MI5 and MI6 officers, as well as monitoring members of the intelligence agencies involved in what are described as “high risk” roles -meaning spies responsible for recruiting foreign agents and those officers involved in undercover operations. Intelligence sources…

Explosive claims have emerged from the Ukraine that a former model who accused one of the most powerful men on Wall Street of multiple sexual assaults, is a Russian spy. The intelligence arm of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence published a list of what it said are FSB employees on its own website, and later shared it on Twitter. They include names, addresses and even passport numbers. As recent investigations by the website Bellingcat show, names and passports are frequently altered to suit the legends of the spies. According to the country’s Intelligence Directorate, Guzel Ganieva is one of 620 FSB…

China is being roundly mocked over its decision to sanction the children of lawmakers who have spoken out over its aggression towards Taiwan and human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Five British politicians and their families were hit with Chinese sanctions last year, which bars them from visiting Hong Kong, Macau, and the mainland. Dozens of European parliament MEPs have since been added to the Chinese sanctions list, along with US senators and members of the Taiwanese legislature. The joke doing the rounds at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit at the senate in Washington DC last week was that…

CHINA has been accused by the United Nations of large scale imprisonment, systematic rape, enforced sterilisation, and torture against the Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities. An explosive report by Michael Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, details credible evidence that China’s government is committing serious “crimes against humanity.” Among the UN’s findings is that a “pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention” occurred in Xinjiang’s detention centres from 2017 to 2019. The 48-page report also reveals policies supporting forced labour. China slammed the report as “manufactured,” claiming it is completely illegal and invalid, insisting it serves as a political tool for…

We all knew that this sad day was inevitable but still held eternal hope that we would somehow find ourselves not having to utter those four sober and solemn words: ‘The Queen is dead.’ That day has come, and we have spoken. Her Majesty was, without a shadow of doubt, a truly exceptional woman. She was a much-loved Monarch, undeniably the world’s pre-eminent Statesperson, the standard bearer for the United Kingdom, the Head of our Armed Forces, and the indomitable and steadfast head of our Royal family. Her incredible legacy and duty to public service will live on and on;…

In mid-August, China’s angry response to US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei was to fire live missiles over Taiwan and into its territorial waters and hold military exercises closer than ever before to the island. Tension between China and Taiwan, or between China and the USA over Taiwan, is not new. The latest incident has already been dubbed ‘the fourth Taiwan Strait crisis’ after previous events in 1995-6, 1958 and 1954, but this time the Chinese intimidation occurred closer than ever before to Taiwan, with the attendant risk that a miscalculation would spark full scale conflict.…

Lord Richard Dannatt, former head of the British Army, writes exclusively for National Security News, urging King Charles III to “take on the same mantle of inscrutability” as his beloved late mother, and serve Britain and the armed forces in the 21st century. Much has already been written and said about the special relationship that members of the British Armed Forces have with their Sovereign. Until last Thursday, every recruit to the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force swore an Oath of Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I swore that Oath on 28th August…

by Mark Toth and Jon Sweet. In February, no one predicted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine would result in Moscow becoming militarily dependent on rogue states – including Iran and North Korea – operating, in effect, as ‘Arsenals of Evil.’ Not General Mark Milley, the United States Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who testified before Congress that Kyiv “could fall within 72 hours.” Nor western think-tanks or analysts – including the Rand Corporation and Tor Bukkvoll, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, who speculated it could only be “days or weeks”…

Dennis Rice, reporting from the Senate, Washington DC. China is facing an extraordinary double whammy of sanctions over its aggression towards Taiwan and what one of the Ukraine’s most powerful politicians termed as its “hypocritical” stance over the former Russian republic. After addressing a historic meeting of representatives from pacific nations at the Senate, organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), Aleksandr Merezjko, Chair of the Ukraine’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke exclusively to NSN, saying he and his fellow Ukrainians felt “utterly betrayed” by their former close trading partner. Merezjko earlier told a packed press conference at the…