CNN
—
The US Treasury Department on Thursday designated the Wagner Group, a Russian private mercenary organization heavily involved in the war in Ukraine, as a significant international criminal organization and imposed a series of sanctions on the international network that supports it.
According to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the U.S. State Department simultaneously announced a series of sanctions aimed at “targeting a number of key Wagner infrastructures, including an aviation company used by Wagner’s propaganda organization and Wagner’s front companies.”
“As the Russian military fought on the battlefield, Putin relied on Wagner’s group to continue his chosen war. The Wagner Group has also interfered and destabilized African countries, committed widespread human rights abuses, and extorted natural resources from their people,” the Treasury Department said in a press release.
In addition to the measures against Wagner’s group that the White House reviewed last week, the two agencies announced sanctions against a number of individuals and companies linked to Russia’s war in Ukraine. These are the latest punitive measures by the US against the Kremlin and its proxies as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war enters its second year and shows no signs of abating.
“This action supports our goal of undermining Moscow’s ability to wage war against Ukraine, promote accountability for those responsible for Russia’s war of aggression and related abuses, and continue to pressure Russia’s defense sector,” Blinken said in a statement.
The Treasury Department announced sanctions against a number of individuals and companies linked to Moscow’s defense industrial complex, as well as Putin allies and their family members and two individuals linked to Russia’s attempts to annex part of Ukraine.
The State Department also announced sanctions against “three individuals for their roles as heads of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service, who reportedly facilitated the recruitment of Russian prisoners into Wagner’s group,” the deputy prime minister, who also serves as head of the Russian Federation’s Federal Penitentiary Service ministerial duties. Industry and Trade,” “Chairman of the Electoral Commission of the Rostov Region,” a network linked to an already sanctioned Russian oligarch and a financier of Putin, according to Blinken.
In addition, the State Department announced that it would take steps to impose visa restrictions on “531 members of the Russian Federation military for actions that threaten or violate the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence of Ukraine.”
John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator, reviewed last week’s significant transnational criminal organization designation and future sanctions against Wagner’s group, telling reporters Friday, “These actions recognize the transcontinental threat that Wagner poses, in part because of his ongoing serious criminal activities.” .
Among the companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department for their ties to the Wagner Group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin is Terra Tech LLC, a “Russia-based technology company that provides space imagery acquired by commercially active satellites and aerial . images obtained by unmanned systems,” and a China-based company that “provided Terra Tech with orders for synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery for various locations in Ukraine.
“These images were collected to facilitate Wagner’s combat operations in Ukraine,” the Treasury Department said.
In addition to the sanctions related to the Wagner group’s significant involvement in the war in Ukraine, the Treasury Department sanctioned it for its illegal activities in the Central African Republic. The group was re-designated “for being responsible for targeting women, children, or any civilian population by engaging in or participating in acts of violence, abductions, forced displacement, or attacks against schools, hospitals.” , in religious places or places where civilians seek refuge, or by acting in a manner that constitutes a serious violation of human rights or violations of international humanitarian law related to the CAR.
