“Brutal and Destructive”
London wants to declare Wagner group a terrorist organization
“Involved in looting, torture and barbaric murders”: London wants to ban the Wagner mercenaries as a terrorist organization
© Vasily Deryugin/Kommersant Publishing House/AP/dpa
The Russian private army Wagner is to be banned in Great Britain. Secretary of the Interior Braverman calls the group “a threat to global security.” The British government wants to support Ukraine in the fight against Russia wherever possible.
If terrorist activities are suspected, the British Home Secretary can ban an organization. Such a ban already applies to the jihadist militia Islamic State and the terrorist network Al Qaeda. Supporting banned organizations becomes a criminal offence.
Wagner was “a brutal and destructive organization operating abroad as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia,” the Interior Minister quoted the Daily Mail as saying. “While Putin’s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner’s ongoing destabilizing activities continue to serve the Kremlin’s political purposes,” Braverman said.
Wagner group “Terrorists, quite simply”
The Wagner group was “involved in looting, torture and barbaric murders,” Braverman said, according to the Daily Mail. The group’s actions in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa are “a threat to global security,” she added. That’s why London will ban “this terrorist organization” and continue to support Ukraine “wherever we can in their fight against Russia.”
“They are terrorists, quite simply – and this prohibition order makes that clear in British law,” the BBC quoted the minister as saying.
Britain had already imposed sanctions on Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash last month, and several of his key commanders for involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine.