UK set to list Russia’s Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation
• FRENCH president Emmanuel Macron has led tributes to a journalist killed while reporting on the war in Ukraine. Arman Soldin, 32, who worked for the AFP news agency, died on Tuesday after being hit by rocket fire west of Bakhmut. He was part of a team of journalists who came under fire. Mr Macron said in a tweet: “We share the pain of his loved ones and colleagues.” AFP chairman Fabrice Fries said they were “devastated”and that Mr Soldin’s death was a “terrible reminder of the risks and dangers faced by journalists covering the conflict”.
BRITAIN is set to list Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group as a proscribed terrorist organisation, it was reported today.
The Times quoted a government source as saying the move was “imminent” and likely to be enacted within weeks after two months spent building a legal case.
Proscription would make it a criminal offence to join Wagner, encourage support for it, display its logo in public or attend its meetings.
Among other organisations on the Government’s proscribed list are the Islamic State, al Qaeda and neo-Nazi group National Action.
It comes as Labour demanded ministers formally label the Wagner Group a terror outfit after accusing it of committing “appalling atrocities”.
The group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin and made up of contractors and recruited convicts, has been fighting alongside Russian regular forces in eastern Ukraine. It has been heavily involved in the longest battle of the war for the city of Bakhmut.
Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said that international allies must continue supporting Ukraine in order to uphold the principle that “powerful nations cannot invade their neighbours with impunity”.
Speaking on a visit to the US, Mr Cleverly said: “We will expect to hear escalatory words coming out of Vladimir Putin’s lips — we need to be ready for that, we need to have the resolve to continue to do the right thing, notwithstanding those comments.”
Labour said in February it wanted ministers to follow the US’s lead after Washington designated Wagner a “significant transnational criminal organisation”. In a joint statement, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy and shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: “No-one in the UK should be allowed to belong to the Wagner Group, support it or promote it.”
The push for Wagner to be proscribed came after a Government department reportedly helped Mr Prigozhin to circumvent UK sanctions to take a British journalist to court in 2021.