At a press briefing on Friday evening, John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, claimed that North Korea had transmitted rockets to the Wagner mercenary group. He also spoke of growing tensions between the Russian army and this private militia in Ukraine.
The United States on Friday designated the Russian paramilitary group Wagner as an international criminal organization, denouncing its abuses committed in Ukraine, its use of weapons delivered by North Korea and its massive recruitment of detainees.
“Wagner is a criminal organization that commits vast atrocities and human rights abuses,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
John Kirby notably showed the press satellite images taken by American intelligence of alleged Russian wagons leaving Russia bound for North Korea and then returning to Russian territory with military equipment, including rockets for the Wagner group in Ukraine.
The images were taken on November 18 and 19, he said, adding that the United States had passed this information to the UN Security Council as part of the sanctions targeting Pyongyang.
50,000 Wagner soldiers in Ukraine including 40,000 prisoners
John Kirby has also quantified Wagner’s numbers, and the share of soldiers recruited in prison in his numbers.
“We continue to consider that the Wagner group currently has some 50,000 people deployed in Ukraine, including 10,000 mercenaries and 40,000 prisoners” to such an extent that this arouses the “reservations” of the Russian Ministry of Defense on its “recruitment methods”, has he said.
New sanctions to come against the militia
The official announced that Washington would take other sanctions soon against the Wagner group, in the wake of the designation Friday of the group as a criminal organization in the image of the Mafia or other organizations linked to organized crime, such as the yakuza.
“We will work tirelessly to identify, expose and target all who assist Wagner,” said John Kirby.
The Wagner group, a tool in the hands of its leader
According to Washington, the group is growing in power and now rivals Russian forces. “We have intelligence information that tensions between Wagner and the Department of Defense are escalating,” he said.
“Wagner is becoming a center of power competing with the Russian army and other Russian ministries,” said the American official for whom “Prigojine (Evguény Prigojine, Wagner’s boss, editor’s note) advances his own interests in Ukraine”. “Wagner makes military decisions on the overall basis of what they will generate favorable for him in particular in terms of publicity”, he added.
The divisions between the Russian army and the Wagner group, noted by many observers, burst into the open during the battle for the small town of Soledar, in eastern Ukraine. When Evgunéy Prigojine claimed responsibility for taking Soledar, he was quickly contradicted by the Russian Ministry of Defense, which itself announced the capture of the city two days later, which kyiv denied.
The Kremlin, however, on Monday denied any tension between the Russian army and the paramilitary group, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, speaking of “manipulation”.
