The US Treasury has formally designated Russia’s Wagner Group as a “significant transnational criminal organisation”, amid growing international pressure to crack down on the paramilitary group that has been one of the main players in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said it was placing sanctions on Wagner in addition to 15 other Russian entities, as well as eight individuals and four aircraft, in an effort to “degrade the Russian Federation’s capacity to wage war against Ukraine”.
“As sanctions and export controls on Russia from our international coalition continue to bite, the Kremlin is desperately searching for arms and support — including through the brutal Wagner Group — to continue its unjust war against Ukraine,” Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement on Thursday.
“Today’s expanded sanctions on Wagner, as well as new sanctions on their associates and other companies enabling the Russian military complex, will further impede Putin’s ability to arm and equip his war machine,” she added.
John Kirby, spokesperson at the US National Security Council, had previewed Thursday’s sanctions last week, saying the designation would give the US “additional avenues” to go after Wagner, not just in Ukraine but around the world.
Wagner is run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ex-convict who has transformed himself into one of president Vladimir Putin’s most valuable allies in the war in Ukraine. Prigozhin, whom Washington alleges was also involved in Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 US election, has been under US sanctions since 2017.
Wagner has 50,000 mercenaries on the ground in the war, according to the UK ministry of defence, many of them Russian prisoners who have been offered an end to their jail sentences in exchange for taking part in the fighting. The US NSC estimates roughly four in five Wagner fighters came to the battlefield from Russian prisons.
The group has also been active in Mali, Sudan and the Central African Republic, where it has been accused of carrying out human rights atrocities.
Wagner has been instrumental in Russia’s prolonged full-scale invasion, particularly around the Ukrainian cities of Soledar and Bakhmut, two crucial battlegrounds in the war.
Ofac said the sanctions, along with concurrent restrictions from the US state department, will target the infrastructure that Russia has used in its battlefield operations in Ukraine.
Last month, the US commerce department imposed restrictions on Wagner, designating the group “a military end user”, preventing it from acquiring any items that use US technology.