Biden administration levels new sanctions on Russia’s Wagner mercenary group

The Biden administration on Thursday announced new sanctions toward individuals and entities in the Wagner Group and the Russian mercenary company’s leader, Yevgeniy Prigozhin. 

In a news release, the State Department said the sanctions against the Wagner Group will include its key infrastructure and associated front companies, the company’s battlefield operations in Ukraine, those producing weapons for Russia and those administering Russia-occupied areas of Ukraine.

“This action supports our goal to degrade Moscow’s capacity to wage war against Ukraine, to promote accountability for those responsible for Russia’s war of aggression and associated abuses, and to place further pressure on Russia’s defense sector,” the department said in its news release. 

The State Department also said that it plans to designate five entities and one individual linked to the Wagner Group and Prigozhin, targeting a range of the company’s key infrastructure including an aviation firm used by the company, a Wagner-based propaganda organization, and Wagner front companies.

The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated the Wagner Group as a significant transnational criminal organization pursuant to executive order 13581, citing the group’s pattern of serious criminal behavior that includes the “violent harassment of journalists, aid workers, and members of minority groups and harassment, obstruction, and intimidation of UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR), as well as rape and killings in Mali.” 

“These actions also advance President Biden’s plan to promote accountability for conflict-related sexual violence, which calls for federal agencies to leverage existing sanctions authorities to pursue its perpetrators,” the news release said.

The moves come after a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday introduced the Holding Accountable Russian Mercenaries (HARM) Act, a proposed bill that would designate the Wagner Group as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

HARM Act would require the State Department to designate the Wagner Group as an FTO within a 90-day period of becoming law. 

The Biden administration recently designated the Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization last week. 

“Where the Wagner Group operates, atrocities follow,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said in a statement. “The HARM Act will identify Putin’s private mercenary group as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and let the world know that its activities are both malign and illegal.”