The UK Home Office has announced that the Russian mercenary group called Wagner will be declared a terrorist organisation. According to a draft order that will be laid in parliament on Wednesday will make it illegal to be a member of or support the Russian group in the UK.
The order will also allow British authorities to seize the organisation's assets and categorise it as terrorist property. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman said Wagner was "violent and destructive... a military tool of Vladimir Putin's Russia," BBC reported. She added that the group's work in Ukraine and Africa was a "threat to global security".
The group, which was led by the recently deceased Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been active in conflicts in Syria, Central African Republic, Sudan and Libya. It has played a prominent role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine since it commenced in February 2022.
The Wagner troops have been accused of numerous crimes like torturing and killing Ukrainian citizens. “They are terrorists, plain and simple - and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law," Braverman told BBC.
In July 2023, the group slaughtered and tortured hundreds of civilians in Mali and the Central African Republic". According to the US, in 2020, the group planted landmines around the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
Currently, the group's fate hangs in uncertainty after its leader Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash.
