The British government is planning to designate the Russian mercenary Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation, the interior ministry announced on Wednesday.
UK declare Wagner terrorist organisation: Wagner’s assets will be able to be designated as terrorist property and taken under a draught order that will be presented to parliament, the ministry said in a statement. Being a part of or supporting the organisation will be against the law, which carries a potential 14-year prison sentence.
The Wagner Group, according to Britain’s interior minister Suella Braverman, was “violent and destructive,” and it “acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas.”
The statement described Wagner as a threat to international security for his involvement in looting, torturing, and “barbarous murders” across the Middle East, Africa, and Ukraine.
However, The proscription order, she said, “makes that clear in UK law that they are terrorists, plain and simple.”
Furthermore, After ruling enters into force on September 13, it will be illegal to be a member of the organisation, promote it, host or preside over meetings, and display its logo in public.
The Wagner mercenary group has carried out operations in Libya, Syria, and several other nations in northern and western Africa.
The main assault force for Russia’s winter onslaught in Ukraine in 2022–2023 was provided by the thousands of prisoners it recruited from Russian jails to fight there.
Additionally, President Vladimir Putin denounced the group’s June insurrection in Russia as treason, and on August 23, its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and several senior lieutenants perished in an aircraft accident.
Further, Britain imposed sanctions on Prigozhin in 2020, the Wagner Group as whole in March 2022, and individuals and organisations with ties to group in the Central African Republic, Mali, and Sudan in July of this year.
However, The Foreign Affairs Committee of parliament called for more focused sanctions against the Wagner Group’s alleged “web of entities” in July.