UK set to designate Russia’s Wagner group a terrorist organisation

The United Kingdom has announced that it will designate Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group as a proscribed terrorist organisation.

The move is imminent and likely to be enacted within weeks after two months spent building a legal case, according to a government official who would not be named.

Proscription would make it a criminal offence to join Wagner, encourage support for it, display its logo in public or attend its meetings.
Other organizations on the government’s blacklist include the Islamic State, al Qaida, and the neo-Nazi group National Action.

Labour has urged that officials legally designate the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization after accusing it of “appalling atrocities.”

The Wagner Group, directed by warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin and comprised of contractors and recruited prisoners, has fought alongside Russian armed troops in eastern Ukraine.

It has been heavily involved in the city of Bakhmut, where the longest and likely bloodiest – battle of the war has taken place.

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin used Moscow’s Victory Day parade to accuse the West of unleashing a “real war” on the country with its “untamed ambitions”.

Labour said in February it wanted ministers to follow the US’s lead after Washington designated Wagner a “significant transnational criminal organisation”.

In a joint statement, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “The Wagner Group is responsible for the appalling atrocities in Ukraine and across the world.

“No-one in the UK should be allowed to belong to the Wagner Group, support it or promote it.”

The push for Wagner to be proscribed came after a government department reportedly helped its millionaire owner Mr Prigozhin to circumvent UK sanctions to take a British journalist to court in 2021.

After it was revealed that licenses had been provided to allow attorneys to assist Prigozhin in launching legal action against a Bellingcat reporter in the UK while the Russian tycoon was sanctioned, the Treasury commissioned an internal review of its systems.

The department stated that as a result of the review, the government is committed to “further targeted changes to the process for issuing legal fees licences that safeguard the sanctions regime against the risk of manipulation and ensure ministers are accountable for OFSI Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation) decision-making.”