England government is considering the option of designating Russia’s Wagner mercenary group as a terrorist outfit. According to the local British media, the draft will be presented in the parliament for the approval today. Once it is approved, all the assets of Wagner group held in British controlled territories will be seized. The move will make it illegal for any British citizen to support Wagner group or to get involved in any kind of business transactions with them. It is important to note that some of the senior commanders of the Wagner group are already under the British sanctions over alleged human rights abuses however, Rishi Sunak government is under pressure to take further actions against the group.
Earlier British home secretary Suella Braverman described Wagner group as “violent and destructive organization” and a military tool of Vladimir Putin that poses great threat to the global security. The shadow foreign secretary of UK David Lammy also criticized the group and welcomed the move of declaring it as a terrorist outfit, he said on a social media platform that “This is long overdue, but it’s welcome the government has finally acted, now the government should press for a Special Tribunal to prosecute Putin for his crime of aggression.”
Wagner is sizeable Russian mercenary group that is fighting in Ukraine and has presence in Syria, Libya, Niger and some other African countries as well. Initially it used to have nearly 5000 fighters mainly from Russia’s elite regiment and special forces. Later on it’s chief Prigozhin started recruiting fighters from Russian prisons in exchange of pardons. Rough estimate is that there are around 25,000 Wagner fighters in Ukraine war and overall this group has the strength of 50,000 fighters. In a surprising development, Prigozhin attempted to change the regime in Russia in June this year when over 5,000 of his fighters occupied the southern Russia’s City of Rostov on Don which is also the headquarter of Russian military. From Rostov on Don they marched towards the Moscow saying that they want to remove Russian army chief with whom they had issues regarding the under supply of military hardware during the war that resulted heavy Wagner casualties. Later on Prigozhin halted his advances and made a deal with Putin which was negotiated by the Alexander Lukashenko who is the Belarusian leader and Putin’s close ally.
Later on in August this year Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed when his Private airplane crashed while he was on his way from Moscow to St Petersburg. Western analysts suspects that there must have been Putin’s involvement in this incident. At the moment large (but unspecified) number of Wagner fighters are staying in Belarus and their future role in Ukraine remains unclear but it is certain that they are playing key security role in many African countries and will continue to do so in future as well.
Interestingly, many African regimes have direct security alliances with the Wagner group which means according to the new UK legislation the leaderships of those countries could also face British sanctions for having links with the Wagner group so this new British move will have far reaching implications.
Comments
Post a Comment