Ukraine's parliament designates Wagner Group as international criminal organization

Holos Party MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak said this in a post on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.

He specified that 333 lawmakers voted for a respective resolution, No. 8397, on Monday, February 6.

According to the document, the Ukrainian parliament recognizes the Wagner private military company as an international criminal organization.

The parliament calls on the governments and parliaments of foreign countries to take similar actions, taking into account the nature of the activities of the Wagner Group in Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and Syria.

The Ukrainian parliament also recommends that the Prosecutor General's Office, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to intensify the pretrial investigation of criminal offenses against individuals, including from the Wagner Group, suspected of having committed them on Ukrainian territory, with the aim of its quality and prompt implementation and the transfer of relevant materials to court in accordance with the procedure established by law.

At the same time, 336 MPs voted for resolution No. 3735, according to which the Verkhovna Rada called on the United Nations, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the BSEC Parliamentary Assembly, and the governments and parliaments of foreign countries to designate Russian private military companies as terrorist organizations.

In late January, the U.S. Department of State and Department of the Treasury designated Russia's Wagner Group as a transnational criminal organization, which provides for the introduction of additional sanctions.

In addition, the lower house of the Canadian parliament unanimously supported the resolution on sending the government a proposal regarding the official recognition of the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization.

The UK Home Office is drawing up plans to formally proscribe Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization.