Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned the US against trying to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, saying that doing so would risk humanity since Moscow has the world's largest nuclear arsenal.

"The idea of punishing a country that has one of the largest nuclear potentials is absurd. And potentially poses a threat to the existence of humanity," Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy of Russia's Security Council, had warned earlier in the war that if the US destabilizes Russia like it did Iraq and other countries, it could lead to a nuclear "dystopia." As of 2020, Russia was estimated to have 6,375 nuclear warheads, and the US said it possessed 5,750 warheads.

Even though it's widely believed that a direct conflict between the US and Russia could quickly turn nuclear, it doesn't appear to be a factor in the Biden administration's response to the war in Ukraine. Instead, the US is pouring billions of dollars in weapons into the country and continues to escalate its involvement in the war.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has condemned FBI Director Christopher Wray and MI5 Director Ken McCallum for accusing Beijing of stealing Western technology and posing a "pervasive danger" to national security. Such accusations are "lies," the ministry said.

In a rare joint press conference in London on Wednesday, Wray and McCallum warned business leaders that China was determined to steal their technology, and operated a hacking program "bigger than that of every country combined," according to multiple media reports on the event.

McCallum added that China's government exerts "covert pressure across the globe" and presents "the most game-changing challenge" to the national security of the US and UK. He added that MI5, a domestic agency roughly analogous to the FBI, is currently running seven times as many China-focused investigations as it was in 2018.

While the British intelligence boss cautioned that "hostile activity is happening on UK soil right now," Beijing firmly rejected the accusations, with its embassy in London labeling the remarks "completely groundless."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told reporters on Thursday:

Wray "has been playing up the so-called China threat to smear and attack China. Facts have fully proven that the US is the biggest threat to world peace, stability and development. China calls on Washington to stop spreading lies and stop making irresponsible remarks.

In response to continued aggression by the Biden regime and other Western leaders, 10 nations will join Russia, China and Iran this August to participate in joint military exercises in Latin America, right in the backyard of the United States.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will be hosting the drills, called the Sniper Frontier competition, in his country — a 4-hour flight from the U.S. mainland. The drills are an expanded version of exercises held earlier this year with Russia, China and Iran in the Gulf of Oman just before the war in Ukraine began. The nations have reportedly been conducting the preparatory naval drills since 2019, when the countries began to coordinate in the Indian Ocean.

According to a Washington Free Beacon report, a think tank following the situation reported that the Russian "military is prepping to bring, for the first time, some of these military games to the Western Hemisphere."

The heads of UK and US security services have made an unprecedented joint appearance to warn of the threat from China.

FBI director Christopher Wray said China was the "biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security" and had interfered in politics, including recent elections.

MI5 head Ken McCallum said his service had more than doubled its work against Chinese activity in the last three years and would be doubling it again.

MI5 is now running seven times as many investigations related to activities of the Chinese Communist Party compared to 2018, he added.

The FBI's Wray warned that if China was to forcibly take Taiwan it would "represent one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen".

It's official - Boris Johnson announced his resignation as prime minister but defied pressure to step down immediately, insisting he would remain in office until a new Conservative party leader is chosen. In an address in front of No 10 Downing Street, after days of turmoil and mass resignations from his government, the prime minister said: "It is clearly now the will of the parliamentary Conservative party that there should be a new leader for the Conservative party and therefore a new prime minister."

Johnson, one the most controversial British leaders in modern times, said the timing of the leadership contest would be announced next week. However many Conservatives, including a number of former ministers, believe Johnson should leave Downing St immediately. "There's no way I could serve under him in any circumstances," said one.

BoJo also took a swipe at his own political party which abandoned him in record short time, saying "the herd instinct is powerful, and when it moves, it moves."

'Eternal friendship' may not exist in foreign policy, but the two countries can join forces for mutual benefit

The Ukraine crisis has exposed a dramatic shift in the structure of international relations. This manifests itself in the acceleration of Russia's shift towards Asia and in the divergence of interests between major powers.

The breakdown is a symptom of a more fundamental process: A rift in mutual understanding. Something that is not a phenomenon restricted to the current year.

Although we can hardly determine the commencement date - due to its blurred and volatile nature - the symptoms are visible. Sanctions policies, trade wars, controversies around Covid-19, protectionism, Iran and North Korea's nuclear issues, and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan are just a few examples of a world in a state of turmoil.

The simmering tensions between Moscow and Japan during the past 4-month period of the war in Ukraine surged when the Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolay Patrushev sounded the warning at a meeting on national security in Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East on Tuesday that Japan is ramping up its revanchist plans for the Kuril Islands.

To quote Patrushev, "The border situation on the territory of the Far Eastern District is being shaped under the conditions of the US and its allies increasing their military presence in the Arctic and Asia-Pacific regions and activating Japan's revanchist aspirations with regards to the Kuril Islands by means of creating new military blocs."

Russia has been a victim of Japanese revanchism historically. While the world is familiar with Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, most wouldn't probably know about a similar Japanese attack 36 years earlier on February 8th, 1904 on the Russian Pacific Fleet based in Port Arthur that triggered the Russo-Japanese War. By the way, it was also an attack without a formal declaration of war. Tokyo felt emboldened by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, which obligated either power to provide military aid if one found itself at war. The Alliance was directed against France and Russia.

Patrushev has highlighted that the geopolitics of the Far East has phenomenally changed. Indeed, the deterioration of the Russo-Japanese relationship causes surprise, since the two countries have been coping with a cordial, "quasi-friendly" relationship through the past decade, their dispute over Kuril notwithstanding.

Japan is not even remotely connected with Ukraine's NATO membership, but Tokyo is acting in sync with the US-Japan Treaty, emulating Washington's sanctions against Russia. Notably, Tokyo has abandoned its reticent diplomatic idiom regarding Kuril and now calls it a Russian "occupation".

Increased arms shipments to Kiev will not stop Russia from achieving its aims, the National Security Council secretary said

The arms that the US and its allies continue to send to Ukraine will not have an impact on the outcome of Russia's ongoing military operation, National Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said at a meeting on Tuesday.

Russia's "goals will be achieved despite the US and the West providing military assistance to Ukraine," Patrushev, who formerly headed up the country's domestic security service, the FSB, said at a national security meeting in the far-eastern city of Khabarovsk.

The child was torn apart by a shell that hit a residential district in Donetsk, the devastated family told journalists.

A 10-year-old girl was sitting by a bank in front of her house in Donetsk when a shell fired by Ukrainian forces landed in the middle of the street, killing her. The child was torn apart by shrapnel, the grieving family told RT's Ruptly video news agency.

"My granddaughter has been blown into three pieces," the girl's grandfather told journalists. "Look there, there is blood everywhere," he said, pointing to the metallic gates leading to the yard of his house.

Pools of blood were still covering the street in the spot where the girl had been hit by the shell's fragments.

"She did not make it home," the girl's grandfather added, pointing to the girl's sneakers, which were lying on the ground near her home's gate. The girl's body has already been taken to a morgue. "She and a boy ... they were just walking around," the girl's mother said. "She sought to run home..." she began, before bursting into tears.

The Biden administration sued Arizona on Tuesday to block a new law requiring proof of citizenship in order to vote in federal elections.

Calling it a "textbook violation of the National Voter Registration Act," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said that the law's requirement was "onerous" - and took particular issue with provisions such as "requiring election officials to reject voter registration forms based on errors or omissions that are not material to establishing a voter's eligibility to cast a ballot."

The new law would require voters to prove citizenship using documentation such as a driver's license, passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers.