CNN —
The US Treasury Department will designate the Russian mercenary Wagner Group as a “transnational criminal organization” and next week will impose additional sanctions on the group and its support network around the world, the White House said on Friday.
“These actions recognize the transcontinental threat Wagner poses, including through his ongoing pattern of serious criminal activity,” John Kirby, the National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications, told reporters Friday ahead of the Treasury Department’s announcement.
Along with the new sanctions, the US has released newly declassified photos of Russian railcars traveling from Russia to North Korea and back in November in what the US says was the first shipment of infantry missiles and missiles for use by the Wagner Group mercenary organization in Ukraine.
Kirby said that while the US does not believe the equipment has changed battlefield dynamics in Ukraine, the US expects these types of weapon system shipments from North Korea to Russia to continue. Russia has also received equipment, including drones, from Iran as its military stockpiles have dwindled over the course of the war.
“The arms transfers off [North Korea] are in direct violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution,” Kirby said, adding that the US had shared its findings with the expert panel of the DPRK Sanctions Committee of the Security Council.
A senior Western intelligence official echoed that assessment on Friday, telling reporters the West was “certainly concerned that North Korea may plan to expand and supply more military equipment, or maintain those supplies.”
More generally, the US estimates that tensions between the Russian Defense Ministry and Wagner are increasing as Russian President Vladimir Putin increasingly relies on Wagner to conduct operations in Ukraine. According to Kirby, around 50,000 Wagner Group fighters are currently stationed in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts.
“Wagner is emerging as a rival center of power for the Russian military and other Russian ministries,” Kirby said, and the US has intelligence that suggests Russia’s Defense Ministry has “concerns” about Wagner’s heavy recruitment from Russian prisons.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, has complained that the Russian Defense Ministry has botched the war effort and that Wagner fighters should be given more equipment, authority and autonomy to conduct operations in Ukraine.
A senior US official told CNN last month that the Wagner Group had lost thousands of fighters in Ukraine in the past two months alone, most heavily in its operations around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. But they have also proven more effective than the Russian military in some areas, Pentagon officials said.
Tensions between Kremlin defense officials and Wagner Group leaders have also increased as the mercenaries publicly complained that they were running low on equipment and reported that their leader, Prigozhin, wanted to take control of the lucrative salt mines near Bakhmut .
In a video leaked to Russian state media, Wagner Group fighters complain that they are running out of combat vehicles, artillery shells and ammunition, limiting their ability to capture Bakhmut — shortages Prigozhin then blames on “internal bureaucracy and corruption”.
The US believes that Prigozhin’s open defiance of the Russian Defense Ministry is an attempt to generate positive publicity for itself.
“Prigozhin is trying to advance his own interests in Ukraine,” Kirby said on Friday. “And Wagner makes military decisions largely based on what will give Prigozhin positive publicity.”