The UK is to ban Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, British Secretary of Defence Grant Shapps said yesterday.
“Given the activities they’re involved with, it’s important that as far as the UK is concerned, it will be illegal to be part of them,” Shapps told Sky News.
His comments came hours after British media reported that British Home Secretary Suella Braverman was to make the Wagner Group a “proscribed” organization under anti-terror laws, putting it on a par with the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda.
Photo: AP
“Wagner is a violent and destructive organization which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin’s Russia overseas,” the Daily Mail quoted Braverman as saying.
“While Putin’s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner’s continuing destabilizing activities only continue to serve the Kremlin’s political goals,” she said.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the home secretary has the power to proscribe an organization if they believe it is involved in terrorism. A proscription order makes it a criminal offense to support the group.
“They are terrorists, plain and simple — and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,” a BBC report added, quoting Braverman.
“Wagner has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders,” Braverman added in the Daily Mail.
The group’s operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa “are a threat to global security,” she said.
“That is why we are proscribing this terrorist organization and continuing to aid Ukraine wherever we can in its fight against Russia,” she said.
Draft measures to ban the Wagner Group under the act were to be laid in parliament yesterday, the reports said.
Shapps said the measures would ban people in the UK from being “actively involved” in the group or displaying its logo.
In July, Britain announced sanctions against 13 individuals and businesses it said had links to the Russian group in Africa, accusing it of crimes there including killings and torture.
The people and entities targeted — which are no longer able to deal with UK citizens, companies and banks, and have any UK assets frozen — were allegedly involved in Wagner’s activities in Mali, the Central African Republic and Sudan.
They included the purported head of Wagner in Mali, Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov; its chief in the Central Africa Republic, Vitalii Viktorovitch Perfilev; and the group’s operations head there, Konstantin Aleksandrovitch Pikalov.
Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died last month in a plane crash, had already been sanctioned by Britain alongside several of his key commanders who had participated in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Prigozhin — a Kremlin confidant turned “traitor” — died two months after ordering his troops to topple Russia’s military leadership.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home