Whatever your opinion on the issue, take the time to actually read this piece.

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Russia, Iran and China are behind a growing number of life-threatening operations in Britain including attacks and kidnappings, often deploying criminals and sometimes children as proxies, two senior British police officers said on Tuesday.

The British authorities in recent years have repeatedly voiced concern at what they said was malign activity by the three states in Britain, ranging from traditional espionage and actions to undermine the state, to sabotage and assassinations.

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British officers said there had been a fivefold increase in hostile state activity since the Novichok nerve agent poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2017, which London says was carried out by Russian spies.

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Dominic Murphy, who heads up London's Counter Terrorism Command, said the breadth, complexity and volume of hostile operations from Russia, Iran and China had grown at a rate neither they nor their international partners nor any intelligence community had predicted.

"We are increasingly seeing these three states ... undertaking threat-to-life operations in the United Kingdom," he told reporters.

In most instances, proxies, usually criminals acting quite often for small amounts of cash, were carrying out the states' work for them, said Vicki Evans, the Senior National Coordinator for UK Counter Terrorism Policing.

The proxies also included vulnerable people or those who felt disenfranchised, with those aged in their mid teens among those arrested or under investigation.

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Good. I'm sick and tired of.... checks notes.... 12 year old girls wanting to feel proud about being British. FFS this is getting out of hand 😜.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nz/post/25552416

Britain's climate is changing rapidly, with records regularly being smashed and extremes of heat and rainfall becoming the norm, the Met Office has warned.

In an updated assessment of the UK's climate, the forecaster says heatwaves and periods of flood or drought are becoming more frequent and more intense.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband called the findings "a stark warning" to take action on climate and nature.

"Our British way of life is under threat," Mr Miliband told the PA news agency.

"Whether it is extreme heat, droughts, flooding, we can see it actually with our own eyes, that it's already happening, and we need to act."

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38593155

The British government announced in early July that a far-right group called the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) will be banned under terrorism legislation. This will make it a criminal offence in the UK to be a member of the group or to express support for it.

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The RIM is an ultra-nationalist, neo-nazi and white supremacist organisation based in Russia. It was created in 2002 by Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, a Russian national who is designated a terrorist by the US government.

The group seeks to create a new Russian empire, and uses the Russian imperial flag as its sign. The previous Russian empire (1721-1917) encompassed all of modern-day Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Georgia, Armenia and the Baltic states, as well as parts of China.

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The movement does not recognise Ukrainian sovereignty. It sees Ukraine as part of what it calls a global Zionist conspiracy designed to undermine Russia and promote Jewish interests. The RIM has engaged in Holocaust denial and is formally outlawed in the US, Canada and now the UK.

It also has a paramilitary wing called the Imperial Legions, which operates at least two training facilities in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. The US State Department believes these facilities are being used to train RIM members in woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat.

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Since 2014, when the conflict in eastern Ukraine began, the movement has trained and sent members as mercenaries to bolster the pro-Russian separatist groups fighting there. Its members have also actively supported the Russian armed forces in Ukraine after the full-scale invasion in 2022.

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The movement also maintains strong ties with the Russian private military company, the Wagner Group. Imperial Legions fighters are believed to have operated alongside Wagner mercenaries in Syria, Libya and possibly the Central African Republic.

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The movement has been active in supporting far-right organisations in Europe. These include the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden and similar groups in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

It provides training to these groups through its so-called “Partizan” (Russian for guerrilla) programme. The training includes bombmaking, marksmanship, medical and survival skills, military topography and other tactics.

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Two Swedish nationals who took part in the programme later committed a series of bombings against refugee centres in Gothenburg, a city on Sweden’s west coast, in late 2016 and early 2017.

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The RIM has also provided specific paramilitary training to far-right groups in Finland. Some members of these groups have fought on Russia’s side in Ukraine, while others have attempted to establish a Finnish cell of the international neo-nazi Atomwaffen Division. Police raids in 2023 also unveiled plans to assassinate the then Finnish prime minister, Sanna Marin.

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The movement has previously been critical of the Russian government. It initially believed the approach of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, to Ukraine was too soft, while the group’s promotion of white supremacy and neo-nazism is at odds with Putin’s pragmatic nationalism within Russia.

In 2012, the RIM even took part in discussions with other far-right groups in Russia to form an opposition movement called New Force to challenge Putin’s rule. However, the crisis in Ukraine that erupted in 2014 after pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from power has caused the Kremlin and RIM’s political objectives to converge.

Indeed, the group can now be viewed as one of the core Russian proxy paramilitaries operating in Ukraine at a time when Putin needs more recruits to continue the war. Western intelligence agencies now believe it has a relationship with officials from Russian state intelligence.

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