A text requesting the inclusion of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner on the list of terrorist organizations of the European Union will be examined on May 9 by the National Assembly, according to its official agenda published on Tuesday.
The motion for a resolution carried by the Renaissance deputy Benjamin Haddad, without binding value, cites the “many atrocities against the civilian population” in Ukraine committed by this group, some of which can be qualified as “war crimes”.
The text will be co-signed by deputies from the various majority groups, but also from the ranks of the opposition, Haddad told AFP, specifying that elected representatives from the LR, PS and environmentalist groups would be among the signatories.
A precedent in Lithuania
“This is to send a political, symbolic message, a signal of denunciation of Wagner and his activities, which deliberately target civilians for political gain, like terrorism,” he argued. In mid-March, the Lithuanian Parliament already passed a resolution stating that “Wagner is a terrorist organization”, prompting thanks from kyiv.
French deputies have already shown their support for Ukraine by adopting a resolution last week recognizing as genocide the Holodomor, the famine caused in the early 1930s in Ukraine by the Soviet authorities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked them for this gesture, which met a strong expectation from kyiv about the painful memory of this murderous famine, revived by the Russian invasion of the country. Russia had for its part replied by castigating an “anti-Russian zeal” of the French National Assembly, “all the more repugnant as France itself has not yet closed the page of its crimes of the colonial period. “.