UK To Declare Russia’s Wagner A Terrorist Group

The Russian Mercenary Wagner Group is set to be proscribed as a terrorist organization by the British government, the interior ministry has said on Wednesday.

A draft order due to laid before Parliament will allow Wagner’s assets to be categorised as terrorist property and seized, the Ministry said in a statement.

It will be illegal to be a member or support the organisation, punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

Britain’s interior Minister Suella Braverman described the Wagner Group as “violent and destructive”, adding it “acted as a Military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas”.

Across Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and “barbarous murders”, the statement said, calling it a threat to global security.

“They are terrorists, plain and simple – and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,” she said.

The order is expected to come into force on September 13, after which it would be a criminal offence to belong to or promote the group, arrange or address its meetings and carry its logo in public.

The Wagner Mercenary Group has operated in Syria, Libya and a number of Countries across Northern and Western Africa. It recruited thousands of convicts from Russian prisons to fight in Ukraine, providing the main assault force for Russia’s 2022-2023 winter offensive there.

On August 23 its Boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and top lieutenants were killed in a plane crash.

Britain sanctioned Prigozhin in 2020, the Wagner Group as a whole in March 2022, and in July this year sanctioned individuals and businesses with links to the Group in the Central African Republic, Mali and Sudan.

REUTERS