US designates Russia’s Wagner group a ‘transnational criminal organisation’
The United States on Friday designated Russia’s Wagner group as a ‘transnational criminal organisation,’ piling pressure on the private Russian army fighting in Ukraine.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wagner, controlled by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to President Vladimir Putin, has about 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, 80 per cent of them drawn from prisons.
Kirby showed US intelligence photographs of North Korea supplying arms to Wagner for its Ukraine operations, and said the private army has become a rival to the formal Russian military.
The photographs, from November 18-19, show Russian rail cars entering North Korea, picking up a load of infantry rockets
and missiles, and returning to Russia, he said.
He said the US Treasury was formally designating Wagner as a transnational criminal organisation, putting it in league with Italian mafia groups and Japanese
and Russian organised crime.
The designation will allow the wider application of sanctions on the group’s sprawling global network, which includes mercenary operations as well as businesses in Africa and elsewhere.
Wagner ‘is a criminal organisation that is committing widespread atrocities and human rights abuses’, Kirby said.
“We will work relentlessly to identify, disrupt, expose and target those who are assisting Wagner,” he said. Kirby also said the United States had presented its intelligence on Wagner’s North Korean purchase to the UN Security Council’s unit on North Korea sanctions.
The arms transfers from North Korea are in direct violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions, Kirby said.
Kirby said there is evidence that Prigozhin’s confidence in Wagner fighters’ relative success in Ukraine has generated tensions in the Kremlin. “Wagner is becoming a rival power centre to the Russian military and other
Russian ministries,” Kirby said.
“Prigozhin is trying to advance his own interest in Ukraine and Wagner is making military decisions based largely on what they will generate for Prigozhin, in terms of positive publicity.”
Prigozhin has claimed credit for Russian advances over several months towards the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, including the capture last week of neighbouring Soledar.
On Thursday, Prigozhin said in a press statement Russia has ‘a lot to learn’ from Ukraine’s army.
But he insisted ‘the settlement of Artemovsk will be captured’, using the Russian name for Bakhmut. Wagner was founded in 2014 and has been involved in conflicts in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.