Wagner Group

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord West of Spithead]

To ask His Majesty’s Government in which African countries they assess the Wagner Group to be operating.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Baroness Goldie) (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has repeatedly highlighted the Kremlin’s malign and destabilising activities in Africa. These include the Wagner Group’s ongoing military deployments in Mali, the Central African Republic and Libya, with multiple reports of its abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law. The Wagner Group and its owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, also spread Russian disinformation and are engaged in transnational crime while seeking to exploit Africa’s mineral resources, including in Sudan. We will continue to work with our regional and international partners to constrain and counter such harmful activities.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her Answer. There is no doubt that the Wagner Group is state funded and is a proxy of the Russian Government. It has been very useful to Putin in the past for plausible deniability of his grey-zone operations. However, as the Minister said, it may have been guilty of murder, torture, rape and robbery, stealing from and plundering the natural resources of the countries in which it is based. It relies on dirty money and is involved in money laundering. It has set up a network of companies and is causing instability in all these regions. It is highly dangerous and although there have been minor sanctions—for example, against Prigozhin in 2016 and 2022—we do not seem to have done enough. Given that the Wagner Group is so malign, and given the damage it is causing, can we get alongside our Five Eyes allies and the EU in order to have a huge impact on these people, because there is no doubt that they are reeling as a result of the events over the past couple of weeks?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

There is not much that I could disagree with there. For the second week running —this is all getting very alarming—I am in concurrence with the noble Lord. He is absolutely right: the Wagner Group is a repugnant and discredited organisation. There has been a systematic programme of sanctions. I remind your Lordships that, as the noble Lord indicated, Yevgeny Prigozhin was himself sanctioned through the Libya sanctions regime, while in February 2022 the Wagner Group was sanctioned because of its activity in Ukraine. We have also sanctioned key Wagner commanders in Syria, as well as several key individuals assisting its activity in Ukraine. We constantly review the sanctions regime. The UK has persistently called out this activity internationally and is seeking to work with partners and allies, including the EU, on how we can best counter it.

It may be important to note that it is a demonstrable indication of Putin’s policy on Africa that he relies on an organisation such as Wagner, which seems to be indicative of real weakness.