LONDON, England
Britain is set to declare the Russian mercenary Wagner Group to be a terrorist organization, making it illegal to be a member or to support it, the government said on Wednesday.
A draft order due to laid
before parliament will allow Wagner's assets to be categorized as terrorist
property and seized, the interior ministry said in a statement.
Interior minister Suella
Braverman described Wagner as "violent and destructive." It had acted
as "a military tool of Vladimir Putin's Russia overseas," she said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov said Wagner did not exist from a legal point of view.
"There's nothing to
comment on," he said when asked about the measure.
Across Ukraine, the Middle
East and Africa, Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and
"barbarous murders," the British 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," Braverman said.
The order is expected to come
into force on Sept. 13, after which it would be a criminal offense to belong to
or promote the group, arrange or address its meetings and carry its logo in
public, punishable by up to 14 years in jail.
David Lammy, the opposition
Labour Party's foreign affairs spokesman, said the move was "long
overdue." The government should now press for Putin to be prosecuted for
his aggression, he said.
Wagner has operated in Syria
and a number of countries in 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.
In June, it mounted a brief
mutiny in Russia, condemned as treason by Putin, and on Aug. 23 its boss
Yevgeny Prigozhin and top lieutenants were killed in a plane crash.
Britain sanctioned Prigozhin
in 2020, Wagner 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.
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