Britain is to ban Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, media reports said on Tuesday, quoting Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The UK was set to make the Wagner Group a \u201cproscribed\u201d organization under anti-terror laws, putting it on a par with Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, a report in an international newspaper said. \u201cWagner is a violent and destructive organization which has acted as a military tool of Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia overseas,\u201d the newspaper quoted Braverman as saying. \u201cWhile Putin\u2019s regime decides what to do with the monster it created, Wagner\u2019s continuing destabilising activities only continue to serve the Kremlin\u2019s political goals.\u201d 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. \u201cThey are terrorists, plain and simple \u2014 and this proscription order makes that clear in UK law,\u201d an international newspaper\u00a0 added, quoting the minister. \u201cWagner has been involved in looting, torture and barbarous murders,\u201d Braverman added in an international news paper. The group\u2019s operations in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa \u201care a threat to global security,\u201d she said. \u201cThat is why we are proscribing this terrorist organization and continuing to aid Ukraine wherever we can in its fight against Russia.\u201d Draft measures to ban the Wagner Group under the act will be laid in Parliament on Wednesday, the reports said. 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 \u2014 which are no longer able to deal with UK citizens, companies and banks, and have any UK assets frozen \u2014 were allegedly involved in Wagner\u2019s activities in Mali, Central African Republic (CAR) and Sudan. They included the purported head of Wagner in Mali, Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov; its chief in CAR, Vitalii Viktorovitch Perfilev; and the group\u2019s 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\u2019s war in Ukraine. Prigozhin \u2014 a Kremlin confidant turned \u201ctraitor\u201d \u2014 died two months after ordering his troops to topple Russia\u2019s military leadership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Britain is to ban Russian mercenary outfit the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization, media reports said on Tuesday, quoting Home Secretary Suella Braverman. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9376,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}